Seattle City Clerk's Geographic Indexing Atlas

The Seattle City Clerk's Geographic Indexing Atlas

About the Atlas

The Seattle City Clerk's Office Geographic Indexing Atlas is designed for subject indexing of legislation, photographs, and other records in the City Clerk's Office and Seattle Municipal Archives according to geographic area. Neighborhoods are named and delineated in this collection of maps in order to provide consistency in the way geographic names are used in describing records of the Archives and City Clerk, thus allowing precise retrieval of records. The neighborhood names and boundaries are not intended to represent any "official" City of Seattle neighborhood map. Nor is it designed or intended as an "official" City of Seattle neighborhood map. There are many different ideas of what neighborhoods exist in Seattle and what their names are, but the purpose of this atlas is to define neighborhood names and boundaries in a way that improves document indexing and retrieval.

Sources for this atlas and the neighborhood names used in it include a 1980 neighborhood map produced by the Department of Community Development, Seattle Public Library indexes, a 1984-1986 Neighborhood Profiles feature series in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, numerous parks, land use and transportation planning studies, and records in the Seattle Municipal Archives. Many of the neighborhood names are traditional names whose meaning has changed over the years, and others derive from subdivision names or elementary school attendance areas.

Research for the development of this map was done by Carol Shenk, Laurie Pollack, and Ernie Dornfeld. Anne Frantilla is responsible for organizing production of the GIS-based version of the neighborhood map. The map in this form was produced with generous assistance from Seattle Public Utilities. Chris Neman developed the online version of the Neighborhood Map Atlas.

The Frequently Asked Question

Q: Why doesn't this map show my neighborhood correctly?

A: There is no one "correct" Seattle neighborhood map. Representation of neighborhoods in this atlas can never meet all expectations for several reasons:

Different City departments and non-City entities define neighborhoods differently based on many factors;

Familiar neighborhood boundaries and City planning areas and names change over time;

The records being indexed using this atlas date from the 1800's to present, and so no one set of boundaries and names will ever perfectly match all records; and,

At any point in time there may be many conceptions of what defines a neigbhorhood and how it is named.

Examples of various current neighborhood boundaries and names from different City departments include:

Department of Neighborhoods Neighborhood District Council Boundaries
Office of Economic Development Map of Neighborhood Business Organizations
Department of Planning and Development Neighborhood Districts
Department of Transportation Neighborhood Planning Areas

You may also be interested in viewing the City of Seattle's My Neighborhood Map.