History of Hawthorne Hills

Hawthorne Hills is a residential neighborhood in north Seattle. The northern boundary is Northeast 65th Street. The southern and eastern boundary is Sand Point Way. The western boundary is 40th Avenue Northeast. Hawthorne Hills is bounded on the north by View Ridge, on the east by Windermere, on the south by Laurelhurst, and on the west by Bryant. There is a sign for the neighborhood along Sand Point Way at the Princeton Avenue bridge.

The neighborhood is named after Hawthorne Kingsbury Dent, a prominent Seattle insurance executive in the early 1900s who owned most of what is now named Hawthorne Hills. After working for an insurance company for twenty years, in 1923 H.K. Dent went out on his own to establish General Insurance Company of America, the predecessor of SAFECO.

In 1928 H.K. Dent decided to sell undeveloped land which he owned at what is now NE 55th to 65th Streets, east of 45th Ave NE. The property was purchased for about $200,000 by the Goodwin Real Estate Company. Developer Ervin S. Goodwin, also known for Victory Heights and Olympic Hills in the Lake City area, named Hawthorne Hills in honor of Hawthorne K. Dent.

However, before Dent sold his land in 1928, the area around 40th Ave NE at NE 55th Street was marked on maps as Keith, named after settler Jacob Keith who owned land there from 1880 to 1887. Keith Station was a stop on the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad, the site of which is now in the Burke-Gilman Playground Park just across the Burke-Gilman Trail from Metropolitan Market.

Many streets in the neighborhood run against the standard north–south/west-east Seattle grid and are named after college towns. The original plat, filed in 1928 by developer E.S. Goodwin, has a section called University Circle with streets named Ann Arbor, Oberlin, Princeton, Pullman, Purdue, Stanford, Tulane, Vassar, and Wellesley. According to an article on July 8, 1928 in the Seattle Times newspaper, the developer wanted to highlight the proximity of the property to the University of Washington, so he created a University Circle with university names. University Circle Park, which has views to downtown Seattle and the Space Needle, is at the center of these streets.

The southern part of Hawthorne Hills includes a portion of the Burke-Gilman Trail. Hawthorne Hills is located about two miles east of the University District, and serves as a bedroom community for many University of Washington professors and staffers. The neighborhood is home to Seattle Fire Station 38, Metropolitan Market Sand Point, Bryant Neighborhood Playground, Burke-Gilman Playground Park, and the National Archives and Records.

Hawthorne Hills is bounded by the South side of Northeast 65th Street, the East side of 40th Avenue NE and the North and West sides of Sand Point Way Northeast. Note that Hawthorne Terrace was annexed in 1987 to create the boundary East side of 40th Avenue NE.