Crown Hill, Queen of our Hearts

The quietly confident corner of NW Seattle you might be overlooking.

Crown Hill Hardware (previously on 80th and 15th.)

There's a part of Seattle that doesn't usually make it onto the lifestyle blogs. No big name businesses or lines around the block for brunch. No zip code that's become a personality type on an instagram reel (yet). Crown Hill still feels like 90’s Seattle, or like Ballard’s older, wiser, cousin. If you've spent any time in the city's northwest corner, you may already know what I mean.

I'm a fifth-generation Pacific Northwesterner and a fourth-generation Ballard family. Crown Hill is in my current backyard, and I've watched it quietly hold its ground while the neighborhoods around it transform into something glossier and considerably more expensive. Crown Hill hasn't tried to become anything other than what it is, a deeply rooted Seattle neighborhood where people actually live.

A history of Crown Hill

Crown Hill takes its name from Crown Hill Cemetery, established in 1902 at what is now NW 87th Street and 12th Avenue NW. The land was originally forested, and for decades it supported dairy farms and orchards. If you walk the residential blocks today, you'll find old farmhouses and mature fruit trees tucked between postwar ramblers, remnants of an agricultural chapter that the neighborhood never fully erased. This area was annexed to Seattle in 1954, along with a swath of land stretching north to 145th Street. Before that, it sat outside city limits, which explains something that still defines the neighborhood today - most of its residential streets don't have sidewalks. For now, the southern border of Crown Hill is sometimes still referred to in the words of children’s poet Shel Silverstein, “where the sidewalk ends.” The lack of sidewalks comes tends to come up in community meetings and conversations with clients, and it's worth knowing if you're considering the area. But it’s part of what gives this area a quieter, less urban feel than the blocks immediately to the south, and once you live here, you stop noticing or caring about it so much.

After annexation in the 50s, Crown Hill filled in quickly. Returning war veterans and Boeing aerospace workers settled here through and into the 1960s, and pretty soon the neighborhood was built out. Descendants of the original Norwegian farming families still live here, along with tech workers, longtime renters, and young families who got priced out of Ballard proper and discovered that Crown Hill was just a few blocks north, and quite a bit more affordable.

One building anchors a lot of the area’s history in a single address. The old Crown Hill Elementary School at 9250 14th Ave NW opened as an annex to Whittier School in 1919. The Small Faces Child Development Center has been operating out of it since 1980, and purchased the building outright in 2009. It's now called the Crown Hill Center, hosting community meetings, arts organizations like ARC Dance, The Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and Small Faces' daycare and after school care programs. When a building has been a school, a daycare, and a community hub for more than a century, it’s no surprise that there are strong community connections in the area as a result. So many of our friends and neighbors have had their kids at Small faces at some time.

Where Crown Hill is, (and isn’t) today

Crown Hill used to refer to a larger part of NW Seattle. But as other neighborhoods have filled in and filled out, Crown Hill proper has shrunk to a smaller, more defined footprint. It’s now condensed into an atypical shape, sandwiched between Olympic manor, Blue Ridge. Broadview, Greenwood, and Whittier Heights. The Crown Hill business district flanks 15th and Holman road, north of 85th and of 8th NW, but you’ll see many businesses, Parks, and places beyond the official boundary of Crown Hill, still bear the Crown Hill name, throughout Whittier, Loyal Heights, and Greenwood bear the Crown Hill. The QFC in the Holman Village in Greenwood proudly wears a Crown.

Amenities

Crown Hill's commercial core is not precious. We have a Dick's Drive-In that's been there since 1960, and even if you’ve driven along Holman avenue every day for the last 20 years , Dick’s may be the only thing you can remember about this area. But the businesses along this the road are plentiful, diverse, walkable and provide a vibrant little hub for this community.

Starting with coffee - because that’s what I need to start my day - we have three coffee shops - OG coffee- (they roast their own beans), Turtle coffee and the drive through coffee joint by Petco.

For food, there’s Tacos and Beer for takeout or dine in, Alebrijes Kitchen for a delicious dinner with a cozy vibe, and Wild Mountain Cafe for Breakfast.
To gather, there’s the Lampligher Public House and The Thirsty Fish (a drinking dojo - the real ones know).
We’ve also got a dry cleaner, gas station, Petco, McDonalds, Ace Hardware store, a Subway, a Pediatric Dentist, Gibby’s auto spa, and more.
None of these places are trying to be destinations. They're just good, and they're ours.

Housing

The housing stock tells a similar story of unpretentious practicality mixed with delightful suprises. Craftsman bungalows, mid-century ramblers, postwar homes on larger lots, and newer infill townhomes and condos showing up on corners and along the commercial corridors. They are mixed-in age, in style, and in price point. You can still find a detached house with a yard in Crown Hill for less than comparable inventory in Ballard or Phinney Ridge, but you’ll also find modern single family homes going in that are attracting move-up buyers from smaller homes in lower Ballard. The overall values in Crown Hill are going up, and the gap is narrowing, but hasn’t closed to it’s neighboring neighborhoods (yet).

A Neighborhood That Makes Things

Crown Hill has a quiet arts culture, and it runs deeper than a mural on a wall (although we have a few notable ones from Henry and Dozfy.) This neighborhood is home to working artists -painters, makers, performers, designers, who didn't end up here by accident. They came for the space, the relative affordability, the lack of pretension, and stayed because the community shows up for them.

The Crown Hill Village Association is run by a few local neighbors who are artists themselves and they organize a few markets a year. @phillustrations

Then there's the informal stuff, which might be the truest expression of Crown Hill's creative character - in sidewalk joy. Like the art you see in people’s yards, the traffic circles, and the Little Free Peep Show, a roadside display case that started during COVID when neighbor Christie swapped out her Little Free Library books for an Easter scene made of marshmallow Peeps, and it grew from there. Every season a new themed display, like Jaws, The Wizard of Oz, and Mary Peepins. https://www.myballard.com/2020/04/06/little-free-library-transforms-into-peep-show-in-crown-hill/

None of this is organized by a committee or funded by a grant. It's just what happens when creative people live somewhere long enough to feel at home in it.

Green spaces

Crown Hill Park at Holman Road NW and 13th Ave NW is the neighborhood's main gathering green -- about 1.7 acres with a ballfield, open lawn, skate dot, walkways, and seating. It came out of a long community effort to acquire the land from Seattle Public Schools, which is itself a very Crown Hill story: neighbors organizing, pushing, and eventually winning something for the community.

Crown Hill Glen is smaller, just 4,000 square feet, but worth knowing about. Winding paths, native plants, boulder seating. It's the kind of place that exists because someone thought the neighborhood deserved a quiet corner, and it’s a neighborhood gem.

And of course there's Carkeek Park, which is technically just outside of Crown Hill but so massive, and so close by, that hard not to mention it. With over 600 acres spreading up into Broadview, and one of the main entrances next to Holman village behind QFC, Carkeek park is special because it’s one of only three places where Salmon still run upstream in the city of Seattle. It’s a community event to gather there in the fall to watch the salmon return to their spawning grounds. More about Salmon later because they are truly fascinating creatures… Carkeek also includes beach access, train spotting, salmon habitat restoration work, forested trails, picnic shelters, a giant beaver dam, and if you’re lucky, you might spot orcas swimming offshore. It's one of Seattle's great parks, and Crown Hill residents get to treat it like their backyard.

Schools and childcare

Small Faces Child Development Center is the neighborhood's childcare institution, operating out of the historic Crown Hill Center building on 14th Ave NW. The fact that they've been in that building since 1980 tells you something about their staying power and community trust. Many families use Small Faces for preschool and after-school care for elementary aged children.

For families that live in Crown Hill - there are a few different Elementary Schools, because of the Seattle Public Schools Attendance area cuts through the neighborhood -

North Beach Elementary serves the northwest corner of the area, while Loyal Heights serves the southwest corner

At the middle school level, Whitman Middle School has been part of the Crown Hill landscape since 1959, built on land that was once part of the Olympic Golf Course. It offers video production, art, STEM, music, and world language electives.

High school students are generally zoned for Ingraham High School, which has a genuinely impressive academic program and an International Baccalaureate offering that draws students from across the city.

A note: Seattle Public Schools attendance boundaries shift periodically. Always verify current boundaries directly with SPS before making school-based decisions. https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/enrollment-planning/enrollment-data/maps/

Special mention:

I'd feel like I was leaving something out if I didn't mention Swanson's. Located just outside the Crown Hill boundary - it’s a shared landmark between Crown Hill, North Beach and Blue Ridge. Its a beloved destination for many Seattleites, not just because it’s a phenomenally run nursury, with high quality and large selection of plant starts, and a knowlegeable staff, but because it’s a beautiful and wonderful place to be. We are so lucky to have it close by.

Swanson's has been rooted on 15th Ave NW since 1922, when Swedish immigrants August and Selma Swanson traded their California farm for ten acres of Seattle land on what was then a gravel road. The two 150-foot sequoias flanking the entrance today were saplings they planted in the 1920s. The nursery has changed hands twice since then, once to a banker who simply loved plants, and most recently in 2018 to three longtime employees who bought it from within. It has never been a chain, never been a franchise, and it shows.

Beyond the plants, Swanson's has become a neighborhood destination for other good reasons. You’ll find families spending time there year-round, in the kids playhouse, grabbing a snack in the cafe, or meeting up with friends. There's a koi pond, a dinosaur named Humphrey who dresses for the seasons, and a playhouse for small visitors who aren't quite ready to care about perennials yet. This is the perfect place to shop for a gift and their cafe is a destination for breakfast, lunch or coffee. They even have a Nutty Squirrel gelato bar, but don’t tell your kids or you’ll spend your money there.

Swansons makes the place fun with events and special interest attractions year round. The Kids' Club runs monthly drop-in activities from January through September - with hands-on projects for kids take home like bird feeders or planting a boot for your front porch, $10 to $15, no registration required. In the fall, there's a pumpkin festival with an indoor hay mazes and veggie car races. In November, the Holiday Train goes up, a model train landscape with an incredibly intricate and fun scenescape that families return to year after year. It's the kind of place that makes people drive across the city, and Crown Hill gets to claim it as a neighbor.

Staying Connected to the Neighborhood

For such a small geographic area, Crown Hill has a strong set of community organizations, which is a sign of a neighborhood that cares enough to organize. And not just against something. Though social media and in-person events, these organizations are creating a vibrant community.

The Crown Hill Village Association (crownhillvillage.org, @crownhillvillage is the merged neighborhood and business association. They run a seasonal events like - Crown Hill-O-Ween in October and the Crown Hill Holiday Market in winter If you want to know what's happening and when, this is your first stop.

The Crown Hill Neighborhood Improvement Group (instagram only @crownhillneighborhood) gocuses on civic engagement: public safety, walkability, city planning processes, and making sure the neighborhood has a voice when decisions get made at city hall.

And the Crown Hill Center at 9250 14th Ave NW hosts community gatherings, meetings, and events year-round. https://www.facebook.com/CrownHillCenter/ Favorite events include the Summer Garden event and the Rock and Gem Show in March (look for the signs to pop up the week before or check out www.northseattlerockclub.org)

The Part That's Hard to Explain

Every neighborhood has a feeling, and Crown Hill’s feeling has a continuity to it - the families that have been here for generations sitting alongside the families that arrived five years ago. The farm trees still standing on residential blocks. The Dick's Drive-In that has never, in sixty-plus years, changed what it is. The building on 14th that has been serving children and community since 1919 and is still doing it today. That's not nostalgia for its own sake. It's a neighborhood that has a sense of itself, and hasn't traded that in for trendier credentials. If you're someone who values that kind of rootedness, in a home, in a community, in a city, Crown Hill is worth your attention, and it always has been.