Cory's Vintage

Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood sits on top of Queen Anne Hill, appropriately enough, and is one of the older parts of the city.  The hill started being developed in the late 1800s, and by the early 1900s had cable cars taking people up and down the hill to get to and from homes and businesses in the area.  But cable cars can't go everywhere, and some parts of the hill were too steep for sidewalks, so the city built a lot of staircases around the neighborhood where sidewalks might have gone.  Today there are more than 120 sets of public stairs on the hill, and their history has been nicely documented.  This particular staircase is rather vintage, having been built in the early 1900s as part of a retaining wall that holds up Queen Anne Boulevard.  I'm impressed with the amount of effort that went into building what is essentially a sidewalk that crosses 8th Avenue West at Garfield Street, but the fact that it is still there 100 years later probably proves that it was a worthwhile investment.