Founded in 1861, when Seattle was a town of a few hundred people, the University of Washington now spreads its campus across this plateau above Portage Bay. The university moved to this plateau above Portage Bay in 1895; the campus was then designed for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle's first World's Fair, and the axes of the original fairgrounds still organize the layout. Suzzallo Library, completed in 1926, is the most magnificent building on campus: a Gothic cathedral of learning with a reading room 246 feet long, vaulted ceilings, and stained glass that filters light into something between a church and a dream.
In late March, thirty Yoshino cherry trees along the Liberal Arts Quadrangle bloom simultaneously — one of the most spectacular flowering tree displays in the country. The university has produced Boeing engineers, Microsoft programmers, Amazon executives, and Nobel laureates. Husky Stadium, rebuilt in 2013, hangs over the edge of Union Bay with water on three sides — on game days, fans arrive by boat.