Look up at the Seattle Great Wheel, a 175-foot Ferris wheel that has turned above Pier 57 since June 2012. The wheel has forty-two gondolas, each climate-controlled, and makes one full rotation in about eleven minutes, offering views from Elliott Bay south to the airport and north to the Space Needle, with the Olympic Mountains rising behind it on clear days. Pier 57 itself has a longer history: it was built in 1900 as a cargo pier and hosted everything from Alaskan fish cannery ships to the Ivar's seafood chain, founded by folk singer and eccentric restaurateur Ivar Haglund, who opened his first fish-and-chips stand here in 1938 and became one of Seattle's most beloved characters.
The waterfront revival that brought the Great Wheel is still unfolding. The removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct has reconnected the city to the bay for the first time in seventy years, and the new waterfront park stretching north and south from here represents a multi-decade, billion-dollar commitment to the idea that a city should face its water, not hide from it. On a summer evening with the wheel lit up and the ferries crossing behind it, it's easy to understand the ambition.