Occidental Park
| Occidental Square Park | |
|---|---|
 Children playing on the Firefighters' Memorial in the park on the first Thursday in July 2007. First Thursday is the traditional evening for Pioneer Square art gallery openings. Many artists and craftspeople set up for the evening in the park. | |
 Interactive map of Occidental Square Park |
Occidental Park, also referred to as Occidental Square (north of S. Main Street) and Occidental Mall (south of S. Main Street), is a 0.6 acre (2,400 m2) public park located in the Pioneer Square district of Seattle, Washington.
Description and history
[edit]Created in 1971, the park consists of the Occidental Avenue S. right-of-way between S. Washington and S. Jackson Streets, in addition to half a city block between S. Main and S. Jackson Streets. It is the site of the former Carrollton Hotel, run by a Japanese American family and described in Monica Sone's memoir Nisei Daughter, which was demolished in 1956.[1][2]
In 1974, David Neth and others organized Seattle's first Pride Week, which eventually evolved into an annual monthlong tradition of Seattle Pride festivities. Around 200 LGBTQ people met to have a picnic and dance party in Occidental Park.[3] The city officially adopted a Pride parade route ending at Occidental Park in 1977, and the park remained the end of the Pride Parade until the 1980s, when the parade moved to Capitol Hill. In 1978, activists successfully protested an anti-LGBTQ initiative at Occidental Park.[4]
The former Waterfront Streetcar bisected the park, running along S. Main Street. The park is in the heart of Seattle's largest art gallery district, and several galleries face onto Occidental Mall. The Downtown Seattle Association began "activating" the park with summertime seating and activities in 2015 under a public–private partnership, also bringing events to be hosted in the park.[5]
Occidental Park is the starting point for the "March to the Match", a five-block parade of Seattle Sounders FC soccer fans led by the Emerald City Supporters to Lumen Field prior to each home game.[6][7] The park is also used for a weekly farmers' market and seasonal events managed by the Downtown Seattle Association.[8]
The Fallen Firefighters Memorial is a bronze sculpture group by Hai Ying Wu.[9] It was inspired by the deaths of four Seattle firefighters who died January 5, 1995[10] fighting a fire in the Mary Pang warehouse in Seattle's International District.[11]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ↑ "Former Location of Carollton Hotel". HistoryLink. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
- ↑ Yamaguchi, David (June 1, 2017). "The Rainier Hotel". North American Post. Seattle. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
- ↑ Browning, Paige; O'Brien, John; Campbell, Katie (June 6, 2024). "50 years of Pride in Seattle: The early days of the LGBTQ+ fight for acceptance". KUOW. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
- ↑ "Seattle's Rich Queer History: A Historical Timeline". Seattle Pride. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
- ↑ Beekman, Daniel (June 25, 2015). "Private management to 'reinvent' Westlake, Occidental parks in trial run". The Seattle Times. Retrieved January 13, 2019.
- ↑ Gutman, David; Kamb, Lewis; Armstrong, Ken (April 19, 2020). "And the team played on". The Seattle Times. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
- ↑ Goff, Steven (June 15, 2016). "Soccer is different in Seattle. You'll see why in the Copa America quarterfinals". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
- ↑ Thompson, Lynn (July 4, 2014). "New push to lure more people to Westlake, Occidental parks". The Seattle Times. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
- ↑ "Fire Station Tours". Seattle.gov. Archived from the original on May 13, 2008. Retrieved January 22, 2012.
- ↑ "Seattle Fallen Firefighters Memorial - Firefighter Memorials on". Waymarking.com. Retrieved January 22, 2012.
- ↑ Casey McNerthney, Wednesday marks anniversary of deadly Seattle fire Archived May 21, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, Seattle 911 — A Police and Crime Blog, seattlepi.com, 5 January 2011. Accessed 5 January 2011.
External links
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47°36′0.1″N 122°19′58.45″W / 47.600028°N 122.3329028°W
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