To step up or step down, that is the question.
Thomas Horton’s revised Queen Anne Stairs Map, which will come out later this month, will give Queen Anne residents a step up in exploring the neighborhood’s century-old stairways.
The map was originally published in 2008. The revised version includes 124 of the 125 known stairways, including four new ones.
Since Horton does not live in Queen Anne anymore (he now lives in West Seattle), it has been more difficult to revise the map.
“Since the time when I initially created the map, some stairs went away with construction projects and some were added to the hill, which is why we’re updating the map,” Horton said.
“The stairs are just in the Queen Anne neighborhood, and my ‘stairs’ definition was liberal,” he added. “I included stairs that were also in the public right-of-way and that you can go up 24 hours a day without anyone’s permission.”
Stairways in Seattle parks and near libraries are examples, he said.
The map will be sold at various retail outlets. There will also be different kinds of maps: some as foldup maps that can be put in a back pockets, and some as posters to be hung on a wall.
“I’m astounded that people keep these maps and are really interested,” Horton said.
The early days
The map started as a personal project for Horton, he said. At that time, he coordinated with the Queen Anne Historical Society about the stairs, and the group said it would be interested in helping bring this out to the public.
He also added research from the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), which maintains a lot of the records on the construction of the stairs. The agency gave him access to those documents.
“SDOT said, jokingly, they wanted to set up a desk for me since I came in so often,” Horton said.
But Horton said that SDOT kept good records of Queen Anne’s stairways.
“No one had before taken a good count of the stairs, but when SDOT took over, they numbered all the stairs in the city and found one or two that weren’t in the books,” he said. “Generally speaking, they had a really good system in place with photos and documentation of all the stairs.”
But Horton sought to make documentation even better. Though 4Culture provided him a grant to create a new website, the project took Horton two and a half years.
Jake and Cathy Jaramillo came out with a book earlier this year, “Seattle Stairway Walks: An Up-and-Down Guide to City Neighborhoods” that also describes stairways in Queen Anne.
The two mappers joined forces at times.
“Jake started the project after my [first] map was out,” Horton said. “Jake approached me and had a few questions about my process and about this project.
“The book is a different animal from the map,” Horton said. “The book identifies stairs in Seattle, not just Queen Anne, and there’s a lot of information on the map that’s not in Jake’s book. For example, my intention for the map was for it to become something that walkers would add to and write on.
“But I purposefully left off one of the stairs on the Queen Anne hill and put a note on the map that whoever finds it should put it on the map to complete it,” he added.
Horton said there are also jokes on the map, too, such as finding trolley schedules on-line. It also includes quotes of Queen Anne lore and details that would be delightful to the patriotic Queen Anne resident.
Jake Jaramillo, co-author of the stairway book, said the map and book are equally useful.
“Our concept of doing the book was to create neighborhood walks that used the stairways as linkages along the way,” he said. “Thomas Horton’s map is pretty exhaustive — it has all the stairways listed on Queen Anne hill, and the design is enchanting. It’s a beautifully drawn map.”
Why all the stairs?
“The stairways date from the time when people were using trolleys all the time to get around Seattle,” said Michael Herschensohn, president at the Queen Anne Historical Society. “They were connectors up and down to the trolleys.”
But in the 1940s, after World War II, people began using cars and the need for stairs to public transportation were phased out.
However, as housing becomes more dense and people drive fewer cars and rely more on public transportation, stairways may become useful again.
Most of the stairways have remained in decent condition, Herschensohn said: “In April, they did a survey of the stairs and didn’t find them in bad shape at all.”
The stairways in poorest condition reside in the public parks, he said.
Still, stairways, as a whole, are an asset to Queen Anne.
“You can walk from [the former] Queen Anne High School to Lake Union on the Galer Street stairway,” he said.
“I think there is an appreciation for stairs in Queen Anne,” Jaramillo said. “Our hope with Thomas Horton’s map and our book is people will have more and more opportunities to see how valuable stairways are and to enjoy them.”
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