What to know before you go
- 01
This is where Seattle began. Settlers including Arthur Denny, Doc Maynard and Henry Yesler founded the town here in 1852, on the only flat land along a sheltered harbor on Elliott Bay. Before that it was Coast Salish land, with a seasonal village called Djijila'letc.
- 02
On June 6, 1889, the Great Seattle Fire burned 25 blocks of the city center. The city made the rebuild use brick and stone, which is why the district has one of the country's best surviving collections of Romanesque Revival buildings, with heavy masonry and round arches.
- 03
The neighborhood boomed with the Klondike Gold Rush, which began in July 1897. In 1970 Pioneer Square became Seattle's first preservation district, and a national historic district the same year.
- 04
The Underground Tour takes you beneath the rebuilt street level. High above it, Smith Tower, finished in 1914, was Seattle's first skyscraper and once the tallest building west of the Mississippi; its 35th-floor observatory is open to visitors.
- 05
Occidental Square, in the middle of the district, has London plane trees, bocce and ping pong, a play area, Duane Pasco's totem poles from the 1970s and the Seattle Fallen Firefighters Memorial. The park was built over a half acre of asphalt in 1971.
- 06
Pioneer Park, by First Avenue and Yesler Way, is the site of Henry Yesler's 1853 mill, with the Iron Pergola and a Tlingit totem pole. King Street Station opened here in 1906.
- 07
The neighborhood calls itself the center of Seattle's art scene. The free, self-guided First Thursday Art Walk, billed as the longest-running art walk in the country, opens galleries and studios on the first Thursday of every month.
- 08
The stadiums are just south: T-Mobile Park, the Mariners' retractable-roof ballpark, and Lumen Field, home of the Seahawks and the Sounders. On game days the streets fill up, so plan around the crowds.
- 09
It's easy without a car. Pioneer Square Station, at 3rd Avenue and James Street, is on the 1 Line with trains straight to the airport, and the Seattle Streetcar and many bus routes stop nearby.
Game days, events and street work change how busy it gets and where you can be dropped off. Check the Alliance for Pioneer Square and Seattle Parks pages before you go.