Description

Rare early map of Seattle, showing the so-called "Bogue Plan," a visionary, but ultimately unsucessful attempt to modernize Seattle's transit route and municipal infrastructure at the beginning of the 19th Century.

The early years of the 20th Century saw a boom in Seattle, including significant improvements in the city's infrastructure, and municipal beautification. In a burst of pride, the city hosted the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition on the University of Washington campus in 1909. Seattle voters authorized a Municipal Plans Commission on March 8, 1910. The Commission retained Virgil G. Bogue, a respected harbor planner and civil engineer to prepare a plan to for Seattle's future development. The plan set forth an ambitious set of improvements, including a giant train station on the south shore of Lake Union, a Civic Center complex of government buildings in the recently leveled Denny Regrade, a rail transit line linking Seattle and Kirkland via a tunnel beneath Lake Washington, and the acquisition of Mercer Island as a city park.

Bogue's Plan triggered a debate pitting urban Progressives, led by city engineer R. H. Thomson (1856-1949) and the Municipal League, against the business establishment, which feared that the Plan would shift the city's commercial district north and devalue its downtown holdings. Seattle's three daily newspapers editorialized against the Bogue Plan, and public confusion over its unspecified implementation costs contributed to its defeat on March 5, 1912, by a vote of 24,966 to 14,506.

The complete title of the map is Map of the City of Seattle And Adjacent Territory accompanying report of Municipal Plans Commission Showing Existing and Proposed Parks and Park Boulevards, Proposed Rapid Transit Routes