Viretta Park (aka Kurt Cobain Park) + Feud with Howard Schultz and Obama visit
Neighborhood/Type: Denny Blaine
Address: 151 Lake Washington Blvd E, Seattle, WA 98112
Just like our Green Lake Park blog post, the more we delved into Viretta Park’s history, the more interesting it became. Viretta Park was named after the daughter-in-law of Seattle pioneer, Arthur Denny.
- Kurt Cobain
1994 is when Viretta Park was really put on the map because the park sits right next to Kurt Cobain(lead singer of Nirvana) and Courtney Love(lead singer of Hole)’s former house. They moved into this house in January of 1994. According to Zillow the house sold for $1,485,000. The home was built in 1901 and although you can’t see the house from the street on Lake Washington Blvd, you can see the top floor from Viretta Park.
Unfortunately, Kurt Cobain took his own life while in the house on April 8, 1994. The last place he was seen alive was Linda’s Tavern in Capitol Hill. Once word spread of his death, grieving fans gathered at Viretta Park for an impromptu vigil. There’s a bench located right next to the house, that mourners left messages and mementos on.
Most visitors to the park today, don’t realize that the original bench was removed put up for auction and appears to have been sold for $1500. The replacement benches which visitors continue to write on is located on the same exact spot as the original.
Aftermath: Kurt Cobain took his life in the gardener’s house on the premises. Courtney Love ended up tearing it down. She also had the City of Seattle remove a tree in Viretta Park because people would climb it to get a glimpse of the property. In 1997 the house was sold. According to Zillow’s records the house was sold for $289,500, which I find hard to believe because the house is now estimated to be worth over $7 million dollars!
There’s also been talk of putting a Kurt Cobain memorial in the park, which has been opposed by the neighbors residing there and the Parks Chief.
NOTE: I did a little more research and found the data on Zillow is incorrect. It was sold for $2,895,000, not $289,500. Still a pretty good appreciation-over $4 million!
- Howard Schultz vs Viretta Park
Prior to Kurt Cobain’s suicide, Viretta Park was best known for the feud between Howard Schultz(Starbucks founder and former CEO / former Seattle Supersonics Owner) and his neighbors and the Seattle Parks And Recreation Department.
According to this article in the Seattle Times, in 1991 the Schultz’s purchased their home directly south of Viretta Park. The property had no access to the street, so a legal deal was struck to build access to the property through Viretta Park. Even though the access was obtained legally many years before, there was an outcry due to the driveway through the Viretta Park being landscaped in such as way that the it appeared more to be an entrance to the property than to the park. The Viretta Park Meeting to discuss the issue seems to have gotten pretty heated according to the Seattle Times article:
Take, for instance, the experience that Shirley Feliciano cited. The Madison Park resident recalled that on Sunday she and a friend parked their car in the driveway and were accosted by the Schultzes, telling her in angry tones to move her car.
“They were ballistic,” she said after the meeting. “They didn’t need to get out (of the driveway). They just wanted me out because they wanted me out. That (public) property was theirs.”
But then there’s the experience of the Schultzes. For them, hate mail and anonymous phone calls have become commonplace.
The Schultzs were actually sued for infringing on park land along with the estate of the Cobains, who were located on the opposite end of Viretta Park.
In 1997 Washington State Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Schultzes and Cobains and both parties sold their properties shortly thereafter. Although the Schultzes won the right to keep the driveway as is, they did modify the landscaping to try to appears the neighborhood group.
- Barack Obama
Admittedly this is a stretch for Obama and Viretta Park, but this article did include this gem that Barack Obama lived is Seattle for a short period of time, which we were unaware of.
The President Comes Calling: On May 9, 2012, crowds of people, TV cameras, and reporters filled Viretta Park to watch the motorcade of SUVs, police motorcycles, a fire truck, and ambulance that accompanied President Barack Obama (b. 1961) and his staff as it passed on Lake Washington Boulevard before entering the driveway of a private home across the street from the park. Bruce and Anne Blume were hosting the president at a $35,000 per couple fundraising event in their waterfront home.
It’s interesting that this small little park has a history with two of Seattle’s more popular residents, Kurt Cobain and Howard Schultz. Nirvana was such a game-changer during the early 90’s that Kurt Cobain’s popularity still lives on. Chalk it up to morbid curiosity or paying respects in a small way, but Viretta Park offers an unusual visit to a pop culture phenomenon.
We had a lot of fun researching the Viretta Park history. Hopefully, you’ve learned something new.
Related Posts:
- Green Lake Park Secrets- Murder, Crocodiles, Led Zeppelin, Ted Bundy, Secret Skateparks?
- Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Seattle Coffee Shops
- Part 4 – Best Seattle Coffee Shops to Impress Visitors, Impress Visiting Coffee Snobs, Make Visitors Feel Like Locals.
- Best Seattle Bars For Each Stage of Dating
Green Lake Park Secrets- Murder, Crocodiles, Led Zeppelin, Ted Bundy, WWE, Secret Skatepark Island!
Neighborhood/Type: Green Lake(of course)
Address: 7201 East Greenlake Drive N, Seattle, WA 98115
There’s no doubt that Green Lake Park is thee most popular park in Seattle. So why is this blog post located in the “Seattle Secret Places” category? Well, most locals know Green Lake Park as the park with the perfect lake setting that you can stroll around, run around(perfect 5k), fish in, swim in, paddle on, play basketball or baseball or volleyball at or just hang out. We mentioned Green Lake Park in our Revolutions Coffee and Coffee Shops for Each Stage of Dating posts, but did you know about these little tidbits about Green Lake Park?
- Led Zeppelin and The Grateful Dead had concerts here.
The southern most part of the Green Lake still has the remnants of the grand stand that used to be the Green Lake Aqua Theater. It was built in 1950 and was shut down in 1970, but not before Led Zeppelin played a concert there in May 1969 and the Grateful Dead a few months later in August of 1969. Bob Hope even performed here. When the Aqua Theater was first built it, there were variety shows during the summer, but as we all know during the Fall, Winter and Spring, outdoor entertainment is not feasible due to the Seattle weather and so the use of the theater quickly subsided. It just blows my mind that you could have seen a Led Zeppelin concert at Green Lake Park!!
Or Caimans to be exact. In 1986, people reported seeing red eyes in Green Lake at night, which led to people not going into the lake that summer. Was this a hoax? How could caimans be in the lake? How would they have gotten there? This was no a hoax. On June 2, 1986, the Game Department found two 2.5 foot caimans on the shore of the lake. Both needed emergency care and were starving to death. It was believed they were in the lake for a couple of weeks and abandoned by a previous owner. Both were taken to Woodland Park Zoo, where one of the caimans ended up eating some smelt and mice, while the other was too weak to eat and died. It’s believed there was a third caiman that died in the lake due to the cold.
- Ted Bundy Saves a Life at Green Lake.
Yes, that Ted Bundy. Serial Killer Ted Bundy allegedly saved the life of a three year old when the boy snuck away from his parents and fell into the lake in 1970. Apparently, he was the first person to spot the child struggling in the lake and dived in to save him. I don’t know if there is any record of him picking up any of his murder victims at Green Lake Park, but a few of the scenes from this movie depicting Ted Bundy, played by Mark Harmon, sure does look a lot like Green Lake.
- The Secret Duck Island Skateboard Park
Duck Island is a little man-made island that was created in the 30’s that was intended to be a swan sanctuary, but due to an improper breeding habitat it never materialized. Although not formally an official nature reserve, it is considered off limits to people for safety reasons. But in July of 2017, Green Lake Park walkers started hearing strange sounds coming from the island.
When the Parks Department went out to investigate, they found a unauthorized concrete skate park. A local skateboard shop apparently built the park as part of a Nike contest to build or expand an existing skateboard park. The police were called and in November of 2017 a lawsuit was filed against 20 people who were documented on video as taking part in the building of the skateboard park as part of the video entry to the Nike contest. The lawsuit was due to the damages and clean up that was needed on Duck Island. In February of 2018, the City of Seattle settled the lawsuit against the local skateboard shop in the amount of $30,000.
Although this was illegal, you have to be impressed with the ingenuity to build this skate bowl stealthily and having to transport all the supplies over water.
Here are a couple of videos 1 and 2 showing the skateboard bowl on Duck Island
- WWE Hall of Famer Gorgeous George Wrestles at Green Lake
Besides Led Zeppelin there appears to have been pro wrestling at the Green Lake Aqua Theater with the ring surrounded by water. Check out this video from WWE’s library of Gorgeous George wrestling Leo Garibaldi(Masked Marvel) where the wrestlers actually fall into Green Lake!
- Ice Skating on a Frozen Solid Green Lake
There have been 4 times in the last 101 years that Green Lake has been completely frozen. One of those times was in 2017, but the ice wasn’t thick enough for anybody to safely walk on it. Not like 1930 when people drove their cars on to Green Lake or in 1916 when people were able to ice skate on it. As a long time resident who has lived close to Green Lake my entire time in Seattle, this just blows my mind and would be so cool if one day we were able to ice skate on Green Lake.
Source: Pauldorpat.com
- Gaines Point-Murder at Greenlake
On the northern part of the lake right smack dab in the middle between the Greenlake boathouse and the Greenlake Wading Pool is a section called, “Gaines Point”. In 1926, two men found a 22 year old woman’s body with a nearby bloody rock that appeared to be the murder weapon. The woman, Sylvia Gaines, had just recently moved from Massachusetts to be with her father and stepmother near Greenlake. You can read about the detailed events that lead up to the murder here, but it appears that Sylvia and her dad’s relationship was much more than father/daughter. Ewww. One theory is that Sylvia was going to “out” their relationship and in a drunken rage her father killed her.
To make things even more interesting is that Sylvia’s dad’s brother(her uncle) was the King County Commissioner, who tried to get the governor of Washington to pardon his brother after having been convicted of the murder. The governer refused to pardon him , so he was executed via hanging in 1928. Most sunbathers who hang out here probably have no idea that this point is called, “Gaines Point”, and that it was a murder scene
Gaines Point “X” marks the spot
- Giant Fish in Green Lake
This just happened recently. We always see fishermen at Green Lake and always wondered, “Do they ever catch anything”? We suspected there was maybe blue gill or bass in there, but whenever I looked in any fisherman’s bucket, there was never any fish in it. Well here’s living proof that there really are fish in Green Lake and huge fish at that.
In June of this year, not only did this guy catch a 30 pound carp, but a few hours later caught a 45 lb catfish! The previous state record for a catfish was 36.2 lbs. Funny thing is that although he has photographic proof of the catch and he did contact the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife he was advised to get the fish weighed on a certified scale to make it official, but didn’t want the meat to spoil so he said, “screw it”.
He just took the fish home and carved it up into fillets. The Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed that catfish were stocked in 2005, 2011, 2014. Experts believe that due to the lake being stocked with trout every year, that it is possible for trout eating fish, such as carp and catfish, to grow to be giants. Although the fisherman did not get the fish officially weight, a Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist plans to meet with him to get a piece of it so they can at least determine how old it was.
I had a lot of fun researching these Green Lake Park secrets. Hopefully, you’ve learned something new.
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