Thorndyke Avenue West was most likely named after Grace Chalmers Thorndyke (1868–1929). In 1888, she married Daniel Hunt Gilman (1845–1913), the namesake of Gilman Avenue West and half of the Burke-Gilman Trail (1, 2). Thorndyke was established in 1890 as part of Gilman’s addition to the City of Seattle. The original plan shows Gilman Avenue West and Thorndyke Avenue West intersecting each other at Grand Boulevard (now West Dravus Street), as seen in figure 1. The streets were likely a symbolic tribute to their union in marriage. Whether Gilman had the foreknowledge, the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway tracks (shown in figure 1) would make that intersection impossible in the end. A new plat map was produced. Gilman assisted in the establishment of that rail line and was invested in the railroad among other interests, particularly moving coal in the region.

 

The Thorndyke family history is mentioned in the Seattle Parks and Recreation’s Don Sherwood Parks History Collection (3), as Sherwood posits that the Thorndyke street name “probably honors the early day family whose father was Seattle’s Chief of Police” (4). In fact, Captain E. A. Thorndyke was elected city marshal, the city’s chief “peace keeper,” for one-year terms in 1877 and 1879. Five others had held the position before him. In 1883, the position was renamed chief of police. Captain Thorndyke was in the shipping business, and he was the commander of a ship called the Live Yankee (5). He was also the first harbormaster of Seattle around the same time, patrolling the waterfront to help disabled boats, save drowning people, and fight waterfront fires (6, 7).

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Captain Thorndyke and his wife had five children, including Grace and three other girls who all married well. Grace’s sister Minnie was the wife of James Bothwell, the namesake of West Bothwell Street on Queen Anne (8, 9). Grace’s sister Estella married Captain William Rankin Ballard, after whom the Ballard neighborhood is named. Sister Delia married Ballard’s business partner Captain John Ayres Hatfield. Their brother George F. Thorndyke became a shipping magnate, “having been brought up in the shipping business and raised in a shipping family” (10). The captain had accumulated wealth but lost it in the Panic of 1892 and in business deals in Alaska. He lost his hearing in Alaska after drinking too much quinine to quell fevers he contracted; in 1908 he was struck by a streetcar due to his hearing impairment. He settled for a sum of money but ended up in the King County almshouse that same year (11). There was no record found—and it remains a mystery—whether his successful children ever aided him or if he died there.

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In the early history of Magnolia, Thorndyke Avenue West was one of a few major streets connecting the north and south ends of the Bluff. And developer David Eastman relied heavily on this street to sell homes in the Buena Vista development he was plotting (12). The road had been made wide enough for a streetcar, but that never became a reality—a constant source of frustration. The Don Sherwood Collection points out: “Eastman’s main thoroughfare to the Bluff was Thorndyke Ave. leading from the Interbay bridge to the highest point on the hill…Eastman platted Thorndyke Ave. as 100 feet wide, the westerly border for a double-track trolley car line and the east 60 feet to be developed as a boulevard by the Park Department…This ‘divided’ street was accomplished but there was no trolley line” (13). Magnolians bought their own 1919 motor bus to supplement the only Magnolia trolley car—the one between Fort Lawton and Interbay at West Dravus. Thorndyke was not paved until the 1930s, funded by a federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) project. Only the west side was paved, however, because even though the WPA provided funds for the labor involved, the Park Board did not have the money for the materials. According to Aleua L. Frare, “Thorndyke traffic was always bouncing from black top to ruts to mud holes and back again, always dodging oncoming cars in the ‘half street’” (14). The City took possession of the east side of the street in 1959, and Thorndyke was finally paved completely (15).

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Today, Thorndyke Avenue West begins at West Galer Street, at the west end of the Magnolia Bridge, and goes just over a mile northwest to 20th Avenue West and West Barrett Street. It picks up again as a minor road on the other side of the BNSF Railway tracks, going about one-fifth of a mile northwest from 17th Avenue West and West Bertona Street to a dead end under the 15th/Emerson/Nickerson overpass at the south end of the Ballard Bridge.