Park History

The roots of Cal Anderson Park go all the way back to the late 1800s with the construction of the Lincoln Reservoir. Shortly after its completion in 1901, the famed Olmstead brothers were hired to design the area around the reservoir, to be called Lincoln Park. The area to the south of the reservoir was developed as a playfield, and in 1922 its name was changed to Broadway Playfield so as not to cause confusion with Lincoln Park in West Seattle.

Decades later the park had fallen into disarray. In the early 1990s, a community group formed to capitalize on plans to cover the reservoir with a mission to build welcoming, open space for the densely populated neighborhood and bring new life to this community resource.

In April 2003, the park was officially named Cal Anderson Park, in honor and recognition of Washington State’s first openly gay state legislator. The reservoir was covered, construction got underway, and in 2005 the long neglected and underused area finally became the jewel of the Capitol Hill neighborhood that we know today.

You can read more about how the grassroots organization “Groundswell Off Broadway” created Cal Anderson Park in this essay written by the community group’s leader Kay Rood.