Columbia City

Columbia City incorporated in 1893 and lived as its own mill town for fourteen years. The City of Seattle says the Seattle, Renton, and Southern Railway reached the seven miles from Seattle in 1890. Surplus lumber went north to rebuild Seattle after the 1889 fire, and finished goods came back south. From 1900 to 1907, new commercial buildings rose along Rainier Avenue South, stores on the ground floor and meeting halls or dance floors above. Most of those buildings still stand.

Seattle annexed Columbia City in 1907. Plans to drain Wetmore Slough and make a seaport as part of the 1917 Lake Washington Ship Canal never happened; the slough was filled by 1920. With money from Andrew Carnegie, a Seattle Public Library branch opened in 1914 above a ravine deeded as a park in 1892. The city still calls that park the neighborhood’s village green.

In 1978 Columbia City became a Seattle landmark district and, the same year, a National Register historic district with slightly different boundaries. The railway that once ran down the center of Rainier Avenue South was removed in 1936. The source below is the City of Seattle landmark-district page.