Seattle's Gas Works Park
Seattle Gas Works Park
Seattle Gas Works Park
Seattle Gas Works Park
Seattle Gas Works Park
View of bridges from Seattle Gas Works Park
Downtown Seattle from Gas Works Park
Seattle Gas Works Park
Seattle Gas Works Park
Seattle Gas Works Park
When we lived in Seattle while I was in graduate school, the gas works was an eyesore along Lake Union. It was a collection of rusting abandoned industrial process equipment and weeds all hidden behind a chain link fence. We engineers thought it was sort of neat to see all that old chemical processing equipment, but most people thought it was a mess. The property belonged to the city, but no one seemed to have any idea about what to do with it.
Shortly before we left Seattle so that I could become gain fully employed, the property began to receive attention. There were two possible uses of the property-- development or park. Lots of discussion went on and finally everyone agreed that it should be converted to some sort of park. Then discussion began about what sort of park should be created. Some wanted to bulldoze everything away and start from scratch. Others wanted to keep all the old equipment to serve as a museum. The fact that the Seattle gas works was the only remaining gas works in the US, played a major role it the discussions about keeping some of the equipment as part of the park.
When we returned to Seattle several years later, we were happy to discover that the old gas works had become a wonderful urban park. There is lots of green open area. And enough of the old equipment has been maintained to provide a sense of what industrial processes were going on here.
The remaining equipment plus the photos and text provide a clear explanation of the purpose of the gas works. And they discuss the nature of the process of turning coal into gas that was used through out Seattle.
The park and the explanations of the process used to make gas from coal remind everyone that the idea of converting coal to gas is an old one--not something that was invented as a result of the 1970s oil embargo.
The Seattle gas works plant was initially designed to convert coal to gas. Coal to gas conversion went on from 1906 until 1937 when the plant as converted to allow it to convert oil to gas. It operated in this way until 1956 when natural gas became available.
You can find more information about the history of coal or manufactured gas on several website. Examples include Manufactured and Natural Gas Industry, Wikipedia, Heritage Research, and History of coal gas.