Ballard was a city of its own until 1907, when the citizenry voted to be annexed into Seattle.

Data updated significantly on 8/20/2019.

The data

This table, like the recent 1895 Seattle Renaming article, shows each original Ballard street name and what it changed to after annexation. A number of original street names continue today, basically anything that isn’t a number.

How to

When I assembled this table in 2015, I started with the 1888 Gilman Addition plat from the King County records website, then reviewed the 1905 Sanborn fire insurance maps available online from the Seattle Public Library, and finally I reviewed a 1903 sewer map online (map 1588) at the Seattle Municipal Archives.

I included a few streets from just outside of the old City of Ballard boundaries, towards Fremont or across the canal. I happened to notice them while reviewing maps and went ahead and listed them.

For more information on old Ballard, check out my book Lost Seattle.

This data has been shared with a Creative Commons license on Figshare. You can download the full table there.

Large update

In August 2019 I uploaded a major update to the data table, which also replaced the figshare spreadsheet. This came after I found the city law that changed Ballard’s street names after annexation, Ordinance 16363.

I made edits to this page in January and July 2019 prior to that discovery. In January I noticed that there was a major change between the original Salmon Park addition street names (plat map available at WA Digital Archives) and the 1903 sewer map I originally used for the data table. I linked to the 1904 Ballard directory’s street guide at Seattle Public Library as a reference to bridge the gap between the two maps. But now the data table on this page should answer any questions.

In July 2019 I included some of the far eastern “additions to the city of Ballard” — areas that we call Frelard — are included in the data I published yesterday for Fremont. You may find your Ballard street name there.

Bonus content

While I’m here I’ll list the sources of a few meanings of street names:

• Denton: Elon W. Denton, filer of Salmon Park Addition
• McDermott: J. D. McDermott, who Denton purchased part of the property from.
• Ablan’s Ave: Named after Philip Ablan

Related articles

• Renaming streets of Seattle in 1895
• Renaming streets of Seattle in 1906
• Streets of Green Lake
• Streets of Kirkland
• Streets of Ballard named by A. B. Jennings
• Streets of Columbia City, Beacon Hill and West Seattle in 1907
• Streets of Fremont, Wallingford, Latona and Brooklyn (western U District) c1891 through today
• Brygger Place: Ballard Streets Revisited
• Weird Streets of UMadBro (for Capitol Hill Seattle Blog)
• 1892 problems at Harvard and Thomas (for Capitol Hill Seattle Blog)
• All structures built in Seattle area in 1890