"Fauntleroy and Morgan Junction" Stairway Walk Update

Thistle stairs on a rainy day

Starting in February 2014 and continuing for the next two years or so, walkers on the "Fauntleroy and Morgan Junction" stairway route (Chapter 16) will encounter a large construction project, soon after exiting Lincoln Park. We think the route will stay walkable, despite major impacts on either side of Beach Drive where the route passes next to Lowman Park. 

The project will add storage capacity to the King County system that transports sewage and drainwater, from residential areas along the Sound all the way up to the sewage treatment center near Magnolia's Discovery Park. There are pumping and storage stations all along the way, including at Lowman Park. A huge tank will be built across the street from the park, adding a million gallons of storage. This means that, during heavy downpours, "combined sewer outflows" (sewage plus stormwater) will be much less likely to overwhelm the carrying capacity of the transport system. When that happens, the combined sewer outflow has nowhere to go but into Puget Sound.

It's been a controversial project. On the down side, the storage facility will occupy formerly private land that just months ago contained rental housing across the street from Lowman Park. On the upside, there'll be much less chance of polluting Puget Sound during heavy storms, and the new facility will add landscaping and stairways atop the underground tank and the control station, offering new panoramas of Puget Sound.

 

Stairways to the Past

A discrete palette of stairway styles and materials tells something about life during various periods of Seattle stairway construction. For example, a lot of stairways in Queen Anne have an unusually classic look: they're much wider than elsewhere, with thick, low-slung concrete sides. These are deeply scored with decorative lines and topped with a broad, rounded cap that extends a couple of inches to either side, like cake icing or a muffin-top. These stairs reflect a "golden age" of stairway construction in the first decade of the 1900s in Queen Anne. This was one of Seattle's great boom periods - the Klondike Gold Rush era - when newly prosperous businessmen and civic leaders built grand homes on this hilltop suburb. With a little searching you can find one of the best examples, the "Grand Dame" stairs along Comstock Street, between 1st Avenue N and Queen Anne Avenue N.

"Classic Era" stairway at Galer Street, between Queen Anne Avenue N and 1st Avenue N

Another kind of stairway construction became dominant in the early 1940s, when the last of the electric railcars in Seattle were replaced in favor of wheeled buses. The City Engineering Department pulled up the old streetcar rails, along with the concrete panels that sat between them. These surplus rails and concrete slabs were gradually recycled back into the city's infrastructure, in the form of new and refurbished stairways and retaining walls:

For stairways, the concrete slabs were stacked and staggered; small concrete bricks were placed under each slab to raise each step to a normal height (SDOT Photo)

The upright posts shown here on the SW Thistle stairs are recycled streetcar rails, most likely put in place in the 1940s

For retaining walls, streetcar slabs were held in place with recycled steel rails driven into the ground (SDOT Photo)

Nowadays not every new or refurbished stairway looks alike, though there is a standard plan intended to make stairways a bit more walkable for a wider range of people. Stair replacements, like the new stairs in Cedar Park, are significantly wider, with double handrails that add a relatively small, 1 1/2 inch "gripping pipe". Some stairways include runnels that allow riders to roll their bikes alongside.

Old-school railing and joining

New stairway construction (SW Genesee Street)

Bicycle runnel leads up to the I-90 trail near the East Portal Viewpoint in Mount Baker  

Thanks to John Buswell and Ainalem Molla of SDOT's Roadway Structures Division for answering our questions and sending us helpful info!