Ravenna, Seattle

Ravenna is a neighborhood in northeastern Seattle, Washington named after Ravenna, Italy. Though Ravenna is considered a residential neighborhood, it also is home to several businesses such as the University Village Shopping Center. Many of the neighborhood's residents are graduate students and professors at the University of Washington, with one of the main neighborhood roads, Ravenna Boulevard, commonly referred to as "professors' row". Cowen-Ravenna Park, located near University Village and the walking or biking route connecting Green Lake to Burke-Gilman Trail, is a popular feature of the neighborhood.

Ravenna and Ravenna-Bryant

What is now Ravenna has been inhabited since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8000 BCE&mdash;10,000 years ago). The Native American Duwamish (before contact, the D<u>kh</u>^w’Duw’Absh, "the People of the Inside") tribe of the Lushootseed Coast Salish nations had the prominent village of SWAH-tsoo-gweel ("portage") on then-adjacent Union Bay, and what is now Ravenna was their backyard before the arrival of White settlers. The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway was built c. 1886 along what is now the Burke-Gilman Trail, following what was the shoreline past where the UW power plant and University Village are today.In 1891, a streetcar line followed...
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