Why Like Green Lake? How to Create Beauty and Sense of Stage

The assertion that beauty must somehow play a role in shared urban prosperity seems obviously true, not to mention a healthy challenge to the notion that prosperity is only about economics. In fact any ideal-type definition of urban prosperity ought to include several essential qualities that, like beauty, are simultaneously economic and non-economic. Such qualities might include safety (a topic I will touch on at the end of this post), and perhaps most importantly justice and compassion. But for this short essay about a few acres in my childhood hometown of Seattle, I want to focus on the old-fashioned notion of beauty, and a related quality that I want to define as accessible sense of stage.

Maybe because beauty is so subjective, it’s tempting to exchange for it a safer and more technical-sounding term like “good urban design.” But I’m going to be brave here and stick with beauty, something that by definition anyone can see without attending a fancy architecture school. Similarly, one might substitute “meaningful public sphere” for accessible sense of stage. But the idea of a public sphere smacks of elite discourse and, besides, a curved sphere seems slippery. Anyone can jump on a stage, at least given an appropriate accessibility ramp.

I found myself thinking about these issues when I realized, after spending the better part of a week in Seattle, that every time I go to my hometown I like to make a short pilgrimage to an acre or two near Green Lake. The reason I do this, I also realized, boils down to beauty and accessible sense of stage. Which made me ask myself, why does this particular place have both?

For one thing there is the beautiful lake. Green Lake is one of several spaces where the City of Seattle has historically chosen to make the water accessible, something that ought to be a no-brainer in terms of enhancing any city’s beauty but is nonetheless hardly a given. I used to live in Brooklyn, and much of the majestic East River waterfront there and in Queens simply isn’t very accessible. My current hometown of Sacramento also makes less than effective use of most of its riverfront, with the exception of a simple walking and bike path along the American River that is a major source of civic pride. Come to think of it, the American River bike path looks a lot like the simple walking path that someone had the foresight to build around Green Lake sometime long ago.

Another thing that attracts me to Green Lake is that its park spaces incorporate more than a few gestures toward classic European notions of design. There is the symmetrical esplanade of plane trees running toward the pool house, the lonesome column and arch structure at the end of the esplanade, the curved roof of Evans Pool, and the view across the lake dotted with paddle boats looking out toward the playhouse. These several old-fashioned design gestures, all more than a half-century old themselves as they have been there my whole life, contribute to an often rare sense of formal beauty at Green Lake.

An even more significant factor contributing to both beauty and sense of stage at Green Lake is an infrastructure for play and children’s spaces. There is a seemingly constantly used playground, an indoor public pool (see here for a previous post about pools) and a whimsical stained-glass window outside the pool depicting playful bathers, fish, and waves. There’s a floating platform in the lake that for many years had both a high board and a low board. Given the litigious nature of society, I suppose, that high board may be a thing of memory. I need to check when I am next back in Seattle. There’s a duck poop filled but still often crowded area for sunbathing, a dock for fishing and yet more sunbathing, and a rental facility for boats and boards. Taken as a whole I like to think of the whole zone around Evans Pool as a concentrated public play space, one that’s accessible to small kids, teenagers, and adults all at once.

A couple of interesting courtyards also contribute to the sense of stage. As you can see in the photos below there’s the courtyard at the front of Evans pool, with lush foliage and blue handrails heading in a multiplicity of directions. A newish mid-rise apartment complex dubbed Green Lake Village also includes a great courtyard, complete with stone benches that double as fountains at the entrance to a crowded upscale grocery store. The density of the new development also adds to the sense of stage at Green Lake. Any great stage, after all, requires a sizable audience.

I could go on, but it’s probably best to stop here and recap. The few acres I’m talking about provide easy access to a beautiful natural water feature, deploy bike and pedestrian trails, encompass a handful of old-fashioned design elements that suggest symmetry and formality, boast an extensive and pleasingly whimsical infrastructure for free or mostly free public recreation, play home to well-designed public courtyard spaces, and include enough housing density to make sure there are people to watch, and to watch you, if you want to see and be seen. While I don’t think there’s any one particular recipe to create an urban place with both beauty and accessible sense of stage, if such a recipe did exist the ingredients listed above would no doubt be among the key ones.

I somehow feel obliged to note at the end of this post, though, that talking about a lovely space in Seattle doesn’t seem quite adequate. This year the city feels somehow much more on edge than I remember it. The Green Lake area, like the city as a whole, faces significant challenges.

The first challenge is expense. The pleasant but seedy Green Lake neighborhood I remember from childhood has become decidedly upscale. A quick internet search shows that a studio or small one-bedroom apartment at the aforementioned Green Lake Village complex is likely to set you back a couple thousand dollars a month. Homeless encampments, while not in your face immediately around Evans Pool, have begun to proliferate along the west end of the lake near Aurora Avenue. Meanwhile, Carmen Best, Seattle’s first Black female police chief, resigned last August, stating publicly that the City Council had no adequate plan for keeping the City safe and that the police department had been placed in a position where it was “destined to fail.” I think it’s hard to underestimate just how dismal a light Best’s commentary shines on the politics facing serious-minded municipal leaders in Seattle, especially coming from a respected public official and important Black public figure.

Put another way, extreme housing scarcity and a breakdown in the perceived legitimacy of government authority are a very significant problems. If basic issues like housing, racial justice, and public safety in cities like Seattle cannot be adequately addressed, higher-level urban amenities like beauty and sense of stage will tend to fall under threat, no matter the number of positive elements in the recipe for urban design.