Seattle's Atlantic neighborhood (which has also been referred to as Yesler/Atlantic and Judkins Park) is a triangular community in the Central District area, between Mount Baker Ridge and Beacon Hill. One of oldest residential neighborhoods, it was home to Seattle's largest Italian enclaves during the early years of the twentieth century. Like other neighborhoods in central and southeast Seattle, Black and Asian families moved in after World War II when the discriminatory housing practice known as “redlining” excluded them from neighborhoods in the west and north of Seattle. First altered in the construction of the Lacy V. Murrow Floating Bridge in 1940, the neighborhood suffered greatly during the 1960s through the early 1990s with the construction and widening of Interstate 90 that wiped out a large number of homes in the area and divided the neighborhood. An urban renewal project from 1968-1972 “rehabilitated” a part of the Atlantic neighborhood, which later saw significant gentrification in the early 2000s.

This image shows the intersection of Rainier Avenue and Lake Way, which was later replaced by Interstate 90. The entrances to the Mount Baker Tunnel (opened 1940) are visible in the left distance. The Colman School is to the left of the compass rose; since 2008 the building has housed the Northwest African American Museum. The houses in the foreground were demolished in the 1980s as part of a project to widen Interstate 90.

Caption information source: "Atlantic Street Center (Seattle)" by Mary T. Henry, HistoryLink, retrieved from https://www.historylink.org/File/9613
Caption information source: "Urban Renewal: Yesler-Atlantic 'T'", Seattle Municipal Archives, retrieved from https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/seattle-segments/urban-renewal