And one more thing – you can embed the <a href=”realplaces.RealPlaces walkarounds right in your blog or web site. Enjoy!

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On a side note my father in law who has lived in Ballard forever has an old map of Ballard that has all the old street names on it, I should go take a look at it. He found it in his house when he bought it on Crown Hill in 1970. Also there were some old photo's of the house when it was built in the 1920's and it's crazy to see all the “farmland” around the house when it was built. It was one of the first ones on the block so to speak.

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I thought it was only Ballard that had non-numeric street names not currently in use, because of the annexation. It's eye opening to see the whole town does.

What an incredibly dehumanizing thing it was to strip all those names and go to the Euclidian numeric system instead.

Fight the power! Use real street names!

Thanks.

In 1994 and 95, the Central Ballard Community Council decided that we could do something fun and constructive in addition to our traditional role of land use whining. Taking a hint from the ReTree Ballard group, we thought up a Retile Ballard scheme. Maybe we should have stayed with that moniker, but the name on our grant was Ballard Street Name Mosaic Project. I think the idea was mainly James H, but Gene B, myself, J.H. ,Stan M. and the rest of the council were certainly supportive and involved from the start. Also, hats off to Rob Matson from the Neighborhood office who hosted our meetings and advised on how to shepherd such a project. I thought I wrote the grant, but that's not important. I at least remember slaving over the forms and text, presenting (with Old Timer?) it to the various Dept of Neighborhood reviews, collecting the community matching pledges,etc. We all worked hard and the CBCC finally received (our first?) Small and Simple grant for a relatively small amount of money, 2K? 6K? Lots of folks in the neighborhood helped with pledges and time in the workshops. I don't remember Cub Scout participation although they might have played a part as well. The girl scouts made our cartoons (layout drawings on mylar) for the tiles during a workshop at the Ballard CC. As Old Timer says, we held a couple community workshops at the Loyal Heights CC to make the mosaics. We also held several weekend work sessions along 24th to hog out the sidewalks with diamond saws and cold chisels. Local businesses let us plug into their electricity and use their water connections. Rick Larson, a Ballard tile contractor, and I set and grouted the mosaics. Rick and I received some small pay, too – $600 each I think. Here is a link to more detail and photos of the process on my website. Click the images for more info:
http://www.bensonshaw.com/bensonshaw.com/Ballar...

A CBCC member from that time, Stan M. has done some further research which suggests that the tiles may have been placed only along the street car lines rather than blanketed throughout the neighborhood. During our project research, several long time residents said that the mosaics were everywhere in the neighborhood. Anybody out there have any documentation? These are not only found in Ballard. I have seen the blue and white tiles in other Seattle neighborhoods, which makes me think that they were either sold by some concrete contractor as urban amenity, sort of like aluminum siding, or perhaps were purchased/installed by some transit agency or other public entity. The Ballard Historical Society has expressed some interest in expanding the mosaics to other areas of Ballard. I think we should consider a new motif or something different which marks our time. But that's another story.

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If that sounds like a pain, you can read about this map before you invest the time:
http://www.davidrumsey.com/maps6527.html