This week’s Neighborhood of the Week section in Seattle Times highlights Pinehurst, except they call it Victory Heights. Ha ha ha! The very first sentence is, ‘It’s easy to see why Victory Heights neighbors might be caught in an identity crisis.’ Yeah, because we aren’t Victory Heights! I mean, the north half of Victory Heights is also called Pinehurst. In fact, I always thought I lived in Victory Heights until the prior Pinehurst Community Council president said I was in Pinehurst. I had my own identity crisis! But really, it’s win-win because now I identify with both neighborhoods and get involved with events in both places.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2017761519_realneighborhood18.html
This illustrates that Seattle’s named neighborhoods are not official areas, and their boundaries are squishy. Pinehurst Community Council says if you think you live in Pinehurst, you live in Pinehurst – the more the merrier – welcome, and get involved!
Ummm, can you please provide the boundaries for Victory Heights then? I have just googled half a dozen resources,they all show the boundary as shown in the paper.I get Pinehurst has overlap with Haller Lake and Victory Heights. I find this posting insensitive and not at all amusing.
Better? I sure didn’t mean to be insensitive.
Point being, let Victory Heights have their moment in the sun.I’m sure Pinehurst will have a turn as well if it hasn’t already.
Well, this article is bizarre. Nobody would claim the Lake City Dick’s is in Victory Heights.
Nancy – thanks for the initial amusing email. Neighborhood boundaries depend on the source or who you ask. The Pinehurst Community Council bylaws define the south boundary of Pinehurst as Northgate Way. The last time I talked to someone in the then active Victory Heights Community Council I recall they defined the north boundary of VH as NE 115th St. And there are probably other opinions in the neighborhood. I was told by a person in the Department of Neighborhoods that the City of Seattle (as in City government) does not define neighborhood boundaries. I think that is smart – why spend time and $ on something endlessly controversial? I sort of like the idea of fuzzy boundaries and emphasizing participation in community organization of choice. I would have prefered that Pinehurst got a mention in the Times article after all we have welcome to Pinehurst signs in the area described. But like Sue says it is good that VH and our area got some good press. Maybe Pinehurst should just annex the rest of the City to eliminate confusion :).
I thought I would add that the person who wrote the article might have only looked at some sort of (old?) real estate map that defined the whole area as Victory Heights.
I don’t think anybody is trying to take away from Victory Height’s “time in the sun”. We try to be open and inviting because we want to make sure people can be part of a community if they so choose. Our boundaries are based on people who have been involved because most of the data online is based on before the freeway and doesn’t make any sense. Sometimes their local councils and groups are inactive and other times I’ve seen people change their boundaries to exclude other people.
People are just discussing that the boundaries are very flexible in both directions (and often silly) and people often associate themselves differently than what the city, a paper, or even the community council says. The city has a park in that description of Victory Heights which is called Pinehurst Pocket Park. Pinehurst is also listed as stretching all the way to the north end of Jackson Park and the city (145th) and we rarely have anybody involved from that area.
Also, depending on who you talk to, all of this area is also just called Lake City or Northgate. It’s just a matter of perspective and I don’t think it’s something to get worked up about. Though when people call it Shoreline or north of Seattle, that’s when I get worked up. 🙂
I seem to remember that there are kickball games between Pinehurst and Victory Heights. Practically a civil war! 🙂
Like Garth said, I always assumed that the border was Northgate way. It makes sense. The Pinehurst Pub, Pinehurst Pocket Park, Pinehurst School (next to Pinehurst Way), etc. are all located to the north of that dividing line. Wikipedia has an entry for our little neighborhood, so that makes it true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinehurst,_Seattle
Victory Heights park is located south of there, and (according to Wikipedia) it does goes as far as Lake City Way (formally Victory Highway). Unfortunately, the Wikipedia lacks other border information for Victory Heights. It might be possible to dig it out of some of the referenced literature.
Either way, these are the obscure little neighborhoods that most folks aren’t aware of. Reminds me of West Woodland. If you don’t feel like looking up that neighborhood, it sits between Phinney Ridge, Fremont and Ballard. When it comes to my house, I usually start by saying I live in Pinehurst, then go on to explain it is between Northgate and Lake City.
I suppose Victory Heights is defined by some to extend north of Northgate Way because there is a plat there named Victory Heights, created in 1920. It’s divided into 3 sectors for taxation purposes:
The main addition is NE 105th St to NE 115th St and 15th Ave NE to Lake City Way.
Division 2 is 25th Ave NE to 30th Ave NE and NE 110th St to NE 115th St.
Division 3 is NE 104th St to NE 105th St and 23rd Ave NE to Lake City Way.
Well, well, well! I was all set to get huffy about Pinehurst being swallowed up by Victory Heights in that article. I see I have grounds to be more forgiving. It seems obvious to me that the author didn’t look at the area in person, what with all the signs we have referring to the Pinehurst neighborhood. I still want to say a little “harrumph!” but I’ll let it go. When I moved here I noticed the Pinehurst signs and decided I liked the name and I always tell people it’s where I live (more north than Northgate, east of I-5, west of Lake City, south of 125th). Pinehurst is a nice little pocket with a very nice little Pinehurst Pocket Park to boot!
Another thing which heavily influences neighborhood identity is public school attendance areas. I think that contributes to making Pinehurst ill-defined, because our elementary school building (at 12th/115th/Pinehurst Way) is an alternative school. Most of the kids in my corner of the neighborhood (the Northgate corner) go to Olympic View in Maple Leaf.
Also, regarding the moniker Shoreline and schools, the schools currently in Seattle which existed prior to the annexation into Seattle were in the Shoreline school district.
I live in SEATTLE, the street I live on (24th Ave. N.E.) happens to be in Victory Heights. I appreciate my area (in fact enjoy it, I’ve lived here for 33 years). So whatever tag gets put on the neighborhood is fine with me, the drug dealers
are gone, so call it whatever makes your heart happy! JUST DON’T RAISE MY PROPERTY TAXES AGAIN!!
My husband and I bought our first property in the Pinehurst neighborhood at 123rd and Pinehurst Way, for something less than $1,000. Our 5 children graduated from Pinehurst Elementary School in the 1960’s. I shopped at the Pinehurst Safeway and the Pinehurst Drug Store. Some time ago, I learned that the City considered the region to be Victory Heights, even though the citizens did not. That’s okay: we’ll survive!
Who knew an innocent mention of a neighborhood was going to generate this much buzz, but I think it’s cool, because it says many of us DO have a sense of neighborhood identity. I’ve lived on Goodwin Way and 113th for 21 years, and when I moved in the neighborhood was called Victory Heights. I guess that’s because of the plat Nancy mentioned. So when a sign appeared one day telling me I lived in Pinehurst I did my own harumph about “imperialist community councils”. (just kidding!). I came to accept the takeover but have always secretly retained my Victory Heights identity. How could someone named Victoria accept being called a Pinehurstian.
FYI check this out.
http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/public/nmaps/fullcit2.htm#detai
For demographics if nothing else there really does need to be some sort of guidelines. I think its amusing pretty much no neighborhood wants to claim the Mall as its own, yet the business district is becoming increasingly residential.
Wow, the city map Sue points us to puts Northgate Mall in Maple Leaf.
And it defines Pinehurst as I5 to 15th NE and Northgate Way to 145th.
I too thought the author of the article was mistaken when I saw the boundaries. Then I found the map mentioned earlier which confirmed her referenced boundaries. What I hadn’t seen was that this is a map used by the City Clerk for archival purposes. That makes sense but less so for an article about a current neighborhood. The website says its map is not intended to represent currently named neighborhoods, community councils, etc. Learn something new everyday. 😉
“And it defines Pinehurst as I5 to 15th NE and Northgate Way to 145th.”
Well, that makes the “Welcome to Pinehurst” sign I passed on 115th near LCW on my way home all the time a complete mystery LOL
Also, for those interested in neighborhood naming “disputes” you can see the same thing north of 125th right now. I don’t know all the details but I hear that it was historically called Douglas Park. But I had never even heard of that name and thought if it all as Olympic Hills. That was the community council that attended North District Council, the name of the school in the middle of the neighborhood, what I saw on Google Maps, etc. But there is now also a group that calls themselves Douglas Park Cooporative. And that’s even more confusing because they’re right in the middle of each other, not just overlapping on the edge. 🙂