History
Portage Bay was named in 1913 because of the portage across the Montlake Isthmus that used to be necessary to move logs from Union Bay to Lake Union before the construction of the Ship Canal. “Portage” refers to transporting water vehicles by land to access another body of water — and at the turn of the 20th century, commercial mariners had to take their cargo onto land before continuing into Lake Washington.
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In 1860, landowner Harvey Pike tried to cut the first ditch connecting Lake Washington's Union Bay and Lake Union's Portage Bay, but gave up and deeded his land to the Lake Washington Ship Canal Company, which built a transiting rail line for portaging goods between the lakes. This rail line continued in use until 1878. In 1883, David Denny and Thomas Burke had a canal built for floating logs. And in 1916, the Washington Ship Canal was built, connecting the two bodies of water, but the bay between these two lakes kept its name.
Neighborhood
You will often hear the area referred to as Portage Bay - Roanoke Park. This is because in 2009, the neighborhood was designated as a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places. The Roanoke Park Historic District is roughly bounded by E Shelby Street on the north, E Roanoke Street on the south, Harvard Avenue E on the west, and 10th Avenue E on the east. It features examples of early twentieth-century architectural styles, such as Colonial Revival, Neo-classical Revival, Tudor Revival, Mission/Spanish Revival, English Arts and Crafts, Craftsman, American Foursquare, French Norman Revival, and Italian Renaissance. Some of the houses represent subtypes and combinations of these styles.
Roanoke Park, developed as a streetcar suburb, exemplifies Seattle's early-twentieth-century residential architecture. The neighborhood’s population grew rapidly in the early 1920s and continued to grow into the 20th century. Today, this area has a mix of houses and apartment buildings and is also home to one of Seattle’s largest houseboat communities.
The park, like the neighborhood surrounding it, was named to honor the Roanoke Colony, England's first settlement in what became the United States. The City of Seattle acquired the land in 1908 as a picnic, resting, and turnaround spot for hikers and bicyclists using the looping trail through Interlaken Park.
The bay is home to two yacht clubs, the Seattle and the Queen City, and many houseboats, as well as the Northwest Fisheries Science Center of the National Marine Fisheries Service and the University of Washington's College of Ocean and Fishery Science.
