Lake View Cemetery Seattle

Seattle’s history is etched on forgotten tombstones. The living often ignores the narratives from the dead. Their muted voices reveal lessons, tragedies and triumphs of past lives once lived. Death has become the great equalizer. The former living elite rest beside the humblest. Grandiose monuments rate equally with stark remembrances of stillborn infants and those never attaining adulthood. Some of Lake View’s memorials honor legacies that once shaped the settlement of the Pacific Northwest. The fields of the forgotten represent a collective of brilliant accomplishments, stilled dreams and concluded legacies. Many of Seattle’s buried pioneers would live and depart life long before the city’s urban core would ever evolve. Primarily historians remember their contributions. Their influence is lost to acknowledgement in a labyrinth of contemporary lifestyle haste and distraction. Lake View Cemetery was incorporated on October 16, 1872, only seven years following the American Civil War. The property was acquired by ten of Seattle’ leading citizens and originally named the Seattle Masonic Cemetery. Its earliest burials were transferred from the current site of Denny Park, located north of downtown. Then called the Seattle Cemetery, the 223 interred were removed to accommodate future commercial development. Lake View was positioned atop the Capitol Hill district that offers serene and panoramic views of Lake Union, the Cascade Mountains, Lake Washington and the Olympic Mountains. During the 1890 Seattle expansion, the cemetery officially changed its name to Lake View. Today the terrain consisting of 40 acres accommodating over 40,000 graves including such international luminaries as actors Bruce and Brandon Lee, basketball legend Bill Russell, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and a diverse selection of prominent Seattle founders, personalities and dignitaries. Lake View features a diversity of remembrances ranging from diminutive etched grave slabs to casted bronze sculptures, replica chess pieces, and stately mausoleums. Many of the tombstone engravings have become barely legible with time and inclement weather. This edition concisely profiles several of the biographies from those left behind. Several monuments were selected based on their aesthetic and creative styling. Many commemoratives celebrate life while others express a profound sense of loss, sorrow and resignation. Lake View’s acknowledgement towards the great equalizer of death offers visitors an opportunity for reflection, perspective and solace. Hundreds pass through the park daily with varied motives to view the manicured grounds and displayed homage. This edition narrates some of the interred’s distinctive stories...