See Also: Seattle’s Lovely Viaduct Meets Wrecking Ball Friday — And Yes, Some of Us Will Miss It
And: Seattle Says So Long to Viaduct – and Not a Tear in Sight

The best way to appreciate the Viaduct was always at 50 mph.

OLYMPIA, Oct. 19.—One of the worst things about looking back on the things you wrote for your college newspaper is they never seem quite as good as you remember. They’re not as focused, never as funny. You notice a certain sloppiness in the reporting. Suddenly you realize why the New York Times didn’t call the moment you graduated. A few of the lines in this one make me wince, and to tell the truth, I’d be quite happy to leave it back in the microfilm at the State Library, if it wasn’t for one thing – I did manage to call it.

Back on Oct. 18, 1984, 27 years ago this week, I was so disturbed by some of the nasty things I was hearing about the Alaskan Way Viaduct that I wanted to call a time out. The Seattle Weekly had just run a lengthy essay in which an architecture critic called for its demolition. KIRO radio had aired an interview with an urban planner from New York in which he called it a splendid idea.

My worry was that if terrible thoughts like those entered the Seattle zeitgeist, it would only be a matter of time before the highway authorities began deferring maintenance – and someday the repairs would be so expensive that the wrecking ball would seem the only logical outcome. One of the world’s loveliest freeways would come down just so that people could build yuppie fern bars along the waterfront. The only hope was that Seattle might wake up one day and realize just how wonderful the thing really was.

In this editorial column for the University of Washington Daily, I even called for landmark designation, half in jest. Whoever heard of a historic freeway? Twenty-four years later, a band of Viaduct enthusiasts sought landmark status for real. Not that it worked.

And dang! I got it all right.

I kind of wish, though, that I hadn’t.

And I can only hope I told the story a little better this time.

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