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Public Arts Program
2003-2004 Projects
Spur Line/West Lake Union Pathway
Westlake Avenue N from Galer Street to Crockett Street, South Lake Union
Artist: Maggie Smith
2004
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Artist Maggie Smith worked on a design team with City of Seattle staff to provide enhancements to designated elements of the West Lake Union Improvement project. The project began as a partnership among community members, businesses, Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities to develop a pedestrian/bicycle pathway and to improve parking and drainage and water quality into Lake Union. The artwork draws much of its thematic content and formal cues from the history of Lake Union as a working waterway, the rail line that followed the water’s edge and the drainage system below the path. The artwork consists of benches, sidewalk inserts, pedestrian handrail and a listening tube connected to the drainage infrastructure. At Waterway #1, the whimsical galvanized steel “listening tube,” a double-bell reference to speaking tubes used on old boats to connect above with below, carries the sound of water from an innovative below-ground stormwater treatment unit, a Seattle Public Utilities facility. This element and text in the pathway reinforce references to the work SPU performs in treating stormwater. This project was partially funded by SPU.
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Meadowbrook Pond Kiosk
(Also see 1998 Artworks: Meadowbrook Pond Reflective Refuge)
35th Avenue NE and NE 110th Street, Meadowbrook
Artist: Lydia Aldredge
2003
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Created as part of a second phase of SPU’s Meadowbrook Detention Pond project, the Informational Kiosk is a unique work of art that orients visitors to SPU’s detention pond (developed to reduce stormwater flows and improve water quality in Thornton Creek) and the broader watershed in which it is sited. The kiosk provides a location for educational materials to be viewed. Using the same formal language as the earlier structures at the detention pond, the kiosk makes reference to indigenous Northwest waterside structures, including fishing shacks, bird blinds, and Native American lodges. A terrazzo map of northeast Seattle on the floor of the kiosk shows local creeks that traverse the Thornton Creek watershed.
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