Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of downtown Seattle, Washington, USA. It was once the heart of the city: Seattle's founders settled there in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point on the far side of Elliott Bay.
Map of Pioneer Square-Skid Road Historic District, Seattle, Washington, USA. The Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). It has been successively enlarged, and hence has multiple NRHP IDs: #70000086, #78000341, and #88000739. The location shown for the Visitor Center & Park Office is the Union Trust Annex; in 2005, the Center & Office relocated to the Cadillac Hotel Building. The "North" arrow on the map is actually mistaken. The streets "below" Yesler Way (to the right in this map) are oriented on the compass directions. Those "above" Yesler (to the left) run roughly parallel to the original shoreline and ignore the compass direction.
The early structures in the neighborhood were mostly wooden, and nearly all burned in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. By the end of 1890, dozens of brick and stone buildings had been erected in their stead; to this day, the architectural character of the neighborhood derives from these late 19th century buildings, mostly examples of Richardsonian Romanesque.
The neighborhood takes its name from a small triangular plaza near the corner of First Avenue and Yesler Way, originally known as Pioneer Place. The Pioneer Square-Skid Road Historic District, a historic district including that plaza and several surrounding blocks, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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