SEATTLE — Kurt Cobain performed in a grubby club underneath it. Drivers called it a road of kings, four wide open lanes far above the pedestrian horde. And generations of Seattle residents felt a shiver of romance in the moody shadows it cast over a waterfront already famous for gray skies and gloom.

Now, the Alaskan Way Viaduct is going away.

The viaduct, the last remaining 1.4-mile stretch of this city’s elevated highway through downtown, has been a sublimely ugly and stoutly utilitarian force of engineering since 1953. After years of planning for an alternative, the viaduct will be demolished and hauled away early next year.

Seattle has been made and remade in transformational moments — the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, the 1962 World’s Fair, the explosive rise of Amazon — and the demise of the viaduct will open up a whole new waterfront. Where there was hulking concrete, there will be a view of Puget Sound. Where there was a roar of traffic, there will be relative quiet.

“It will transform the city in ways people don’t even anticipate,” said Jenny A. Durkan, the mayor of Seattle. “When the viaduct is removed, there will be a collective gasp.”