Seward Park is a neighborhood in southeast Seattle, Washington just west of the park of the same name. It is part of Seattle's South End. The park itself occupies all of Bailey Peninsula, which juts into Lake Washington. The attached map is accurate, broadly speaking, in capturing "Greater Seward Park," though real estate sites, such as Zillow, will refer to the part of the neighborhood north of Orcas Street as Lakewood, which is reasonable, since that neighborhood is the historic home of a "community club" once known as the Lakewood Community Club, and now known as the Lakewood-Seward Community Club.
Neighborhood
The neighborhood is bounded on the east and north by Lake Washington, on the south by South Kenyon Street, and on the west by the eastern boundaries of Columbia City, one of Seattle's oldest neighborhoods. Because, as the city ofSeattle proudly notes, Seattle does not believe in wards, wishing to avoid the "ward politics of 'back East'", Seattle has no legally defined neighborhoods, though it now indeed has seven "wards." However, the city does respond to popular definitions, as does Zillow, and the city's website indicates how complex the west border of the Seward Park neighborhood is.
Environment
The 300 acres of Seward Park has about a 120 acre surviving remnant of old growth forest, providing a glimpse of what some of the lake shore looked like before the growth of the city of Seattle. With trees older than 250 years, the Seward Park forest is relatively young. Still, there is no other forest within the city limits like Seward Park's. You can wander trails where all you can see are towering softwoods, mostly Douglas firs, but with other species present as well, including Western hemlock, Pacific madrona and Alaskan cedar. The Park offers at least five distinct experiences, which are further described under the entry for the park itself. One of the earliest settlers, E. A. Clark, was influential in the life of Cheshiahud, a young man at the time, the mid-1850s. The Seward Park neighborhood includes what may be one of the highest residential hills in Seattle. In a series of annexations, the neighborhood joined the City of Seattle in 1907.
Education
Although no schools fall within the borders of the neighborhood as described on city maps, three public schools, Graham Hill and Hawthorne and Dunlap elementary schools serve the area's students. In addition the alternative Orca K-8 lies within blocks of the neighborhood's boundary.
