Home › Forums › Open Discussion › When was Westwood Village built?
- This topic has 26 replies, 23 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 9 months ago by Tony S.
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September 23, 2009 at 7:44 pm #592433
AnonymousInactiveI haven’t lived in West Seattle long so I have no idea myself. The shopping plaza seems a few years old yet the Big 5 Sporting Goods store seems like its at least 20 years old. Was the shopping plaza built around it?
September 23, 2009 at 7:52 pm #677923
KBearParticipantI think the mall dates back to the 1980s, but it was renovated just a few years ago.
September 23, 2009 at 8:10 pm #677924
celeste17ParticipantLonger than that I would say the 1960’s. I can remember going there as a child in the 70’s. I worked there in the early to mid 80’s.
September 23, 2009 at 8:12 pm #677925
AnonymousInactiveDid the basic store structures change? What was the main tenant as I assume Target wasn’t there back then.
September 23, 2009 at 8:14 pm #677926
GenHillOneParticipantokay, seriously?
September 23, 2009 at 8:29 pm #677927
mrhinehMemberI miss the steak house, great happy hours!
September 23, 2009 at 8:31 pm #677928
MargLMemberAccording to this it was built in the 1960’s http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2000/01/17/newscolumn1.html
September 23, 2009 at 8:34 pm #677929
FrogBaseballMemberwow a movie theater would have been nice!
September 23, 2009 at 8:56 pm #677930
GinaParticipantErnst/Malmo and Pay’n Save were the original big store tenants. I don’t remember the original grocery store name–was it Lucky? Skaret’s Sweet Shop, Junior Bootery and a children’s clothing store I can place there in 1967. House of Holland and the Red Baron came along later. Hallmark was there, too.
September 23, 2009 at 9:00 pm #677931
herongrrrlParticipantI don’t know about a “main tenant,” but IIRC from the mid 70s-early 80s, the place where Target is now was occupied by a restaurant called The Red Baron (and they had a very impressive salad bar and darn fine burgers, at least impressive to me when I was 10!). Lamonts department store was where Bed Bath and Beyond and Marshalls is now. Big 5 was there but it was called something else. The Staples used to be Ernst Hardware.
September 23, 2009 at 9:05 pm #677932
JenVMemberremember when the Ernst went out of business and it was “Liquidation World” back in the 90’s?
oh, and The Keg was where the Rite Aid is now. And Rite-Aid used to be Pay-n-Save, and it was dirrrrrty.
September 23, 2009 at 9:06 pm #677933
digidollMemberHistorylink.org records Westwood Village opening in 1965, but there’s only the one mention of it in an article about White Center:
http://historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8616
(a good read, BTW).
September 23, 2009 at 10:09 pm #677934
LisaParticipantI was a kid in the 60’s and Westwood Village was my familys primary shopping location. There was Ernest Hardware, Pay N Save, Lucky Market, Hallmark, Lamonts (mid 70’s), SportsWest/Big 5, House of Holland (cafe), a travel agency, a jeweler (where I got my ear’s pierced), fabric store, Merle Norman cosmetics, Winchelle’s, and of course Skarets Sweet shop. Originally, the only main restaurant was The Red Baron located in the SW Corner right where the bank is now. Over the years a few clothing boutiques went in/out. The original layout of the mall is long gone and the improvements are wonderful.
September 24, 2009 at 4:35 am #677935
celeste17ParticipantI use to work at the fabric store and it was house of fabrics. I remember winchell’s when I worked at WV I knew when they would do a new batch of doughnuts and would occasionally get one.
September 24, 2009 at 1:03 pm #677936
MagpieParticipantI know it started out as a strawberry farm..there have been lots of reincarnations over the years…I used to go there for Lamont’s because other than Penney’s, it was the only department store in West Seattle.
September 24, 2009 at 3:51 pm #677937
GinaParticipantI would imagine that the West Seattle Herald carried full page ads when Westwood Village opened, and reports about the development of it. Checked to see what I could find.
The Seattle Public Library (Central Library) does not have issues of the Herald from that time. No bound copies, and no microfilm. 1945-1946, 1949 and then a leap to 1994-1998 and then 2000. Also has a scrapbook of clippings from the Herald from 1939-40.
I’m curious enough that I will call the Herald office at some point to see if they have bound back issues tucked, or if all that history has vanished.
September 24, 2009 at 4:10 pm #677938
ToddinWestwoodMemberwow I forgot the Keg was there. I took a date there for Homecoming. Oh yeah, big spender.
September 24, 2009 at 5:42 pm #677939
WSBKeymasterAnybody with West Side Story, pull it out and open to pages 32-33. I think it was a paid ad when the book was published but it’s basically history. Starts with guys posing at the proposed site in November 1962. Then “first logo from 1965.” And a photo of what was the abortive start to construction of “Westbrook” in 1960 – followed by years of delays. (Hey, sound like any project you recognize from the current time?) There’s also a 1965 aerial which mentions Mayfair grocery (hey! I grew up near one of those in LA), Pay n Save, and Ernst Malmo.
September 24, 2009 at 6:53 pm #677940
herongrrrlParticipantI just remembered–was anyone else here at any of the ping pong ball drops they used to do there for promotions? They’d get a bunch of ping pong balls stamped with various offers of discounts and freebees, take them up in a helicopter and drop them over an empty part of the parking lot, and then it was like a giant pinata scramble.
November 26, 2016 at 1:17 pm #866327
eric1972seaParticipantI remember pay’ n save was located just north of the McDonalds it became Payless and eventually Rite Aid. Lamont’s was a clothing store where Bed Bath and Beyond and Marshall’s are located they went bankrupt. Ernst went bankrupt as well.
November 26, 2016 at 3:45 pm #866338
The Velvet BulldogParticipantWe live on the edge of WWV itself. My neighbor across the street bought his house when it was new in the 1950s and told us stories of the Japanese farmers who owned the land that is now WWV. He also said he and his son would ride their dirt bikes through those fields, which makes me wonder how much the farmers appreciated that… Hard to imagine all that hardscape as fertile land, isn’t it?
November 26, 2016 at 10:19 pm #866399
jissyParticipantMerle Norman! That place was fascinating to me, one of the gals that worked there wore more make-up than I’d ever seen on any human…. I loved going with my mom just to stare! And Lamonts, big competition to JCP in the Junction — haha, it was the only place I shopped for Christmas presents for my family as a kid b/c they had it all.
November 27, 2016 at 7:04 am #866415
anonymeParticipantWWV and Daystar are built on a former wetland. Don’t know about WWV, but Daystar still has significant drainage issues. I’ve heard that locals used to ice skate there in winter.
Roxhill Park had a wetland pond that disappeared after the bus construction.
November 30, 2016 at 10:28 am #866672
Chuck JacobsParticipantBegining at the southwest corner of QFC there was an open air walkway/mall running north with Winchell’s on the right, the entrance to Pay N Save on the left, and a whole bunch of little stores including a custom t-shirt shop, candy store, and Danielson Jewelers to name a few.
Big 5 used to be Sports West, same location, pretty much the same store, except the gun counter and fishing gear were in the back by the south wall where the shoes are now.
The NE corner of WWV where Staples is now, was a dirt lot for the longest time. I heard stories about a local boy scout troop doing promotional campouts there sometimes.
In the SE corner where Rite Aid is currently located, there used to be a Sea Galley restaraunt. I Miss it!
Roxhill Park still has some marshy/pond areas, just not as big as it used to be. It is still the headwaters of Longfellow Creek.
I swear I read a story once about the Westwood Village/Roxhill Park area originally being planned for a small airport, think 1920s or 30s. I’ve never been able to find documentation or confirmation though.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Chuck Jacobs.
December 2, 2016 at 5:09 am #866910
22bladesParticipantAlthough I don’t live in that neighborhood, I love local history stories, especially when people can tell us about the look and feel of a place that might (or probably will) get lost in time. Thanks for all of you that chimed in!
There are a number of places that fascinate me like the Southgate Roller Rink and Roxbury Lanes. I would love to see pictures of White Center in the 50’s or even the 40’s. I think I read somewhere that the area was developed for wartime workers in the area’s defense contractors.
I’ve been flying planes in the area since the mid 70’s and what we pilots know of the area is that it’s the entry point to arriving at Boeing Field from the West. We first report in over Vashon Island or Blake Island and the tower will tell us to report over the West Seattle Reservoir. To get there, we fly to the ferry terminal, down over Roxbury to the Reservoir. Funny thing is, they covered up the reservoir so if you’re not a local pilot, you’ll be asking the tower what they’re talking about! If you fly into SEATAC, on cloudy days, you line up on the runway over the UW, over Broadway on Capitol Hill, down Beacon Avenue on Beacon Hill and cross over Boeing Field at about 2000 feet. With our overcast days, White Center is usually the first thing a copilot (sitting on the right side) sees after breaking out of the clouds. The Captain (on the left side) will see the traffic jam going home on I5. :-)
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