The art scene in Seattle is booming in an unexpected neighborhood, the industrial heart of south Seattle’s Georgetown. South of the endless skyscrapers of the financial district, an artistic renaissance is blossoming amid the old warehouses and factories, home to dozens of artists, galleries, and independent craftspeople.
Nestled between airfields and train-tracks, highways and waterways, Georgetown has been steadily morphing for years into Seattle’s premier arts district. The area overflows with everything from independent breweries to sculpture studios, from tattoo parlors to art schools, all revolving around each other to create an artistic anchor in south Seattle. Home to the once a month art festival, Georgetown’s “Art Attack!”, Georgetown is the living and breathing core of Seattle’s new artistic community.
Georgetown has become a rapidly growing center for the marginalia of Seattle. That which does not easily fit into other corners of the city, the communities which could not exist in the wealthy or conservative corners of Seattle have found a home in Georgetown. Here is a community devoted to marginalia, to the endless intricacies and details that make a world class city like Seattle alive and vibrant, the brilliant artists and chefs, writers and brewers, designers and musicians. That which fits outside of the status quo.
“Georgetown is an entirely welcoming community, a place where I can walk right out my door and have an interesting conversation with anyone I run into on the sidewalk” says local Georgetown artist Steve Ouch “My next door neighbor is a sculptor, and there is an art school operating right over my head. Across the street there’s an artisan brewery, and a community run coffee shop. It seems like everyone here is completely devoted to doing what they love, and that makes the community better for all of us.”
Georgetown as a community has had a long and stories history. Before being annexed by Seattle in 1910, it was known as a saloon town, famous for it’s loose laws and horse racing, causing one Seattle preacher to call Georgetown the “cesspool of Seattle”. The success of Boeing and the Rainier Brewery breathed life in Georgetown, making it one of the northwest’s biggest success stories, a thriving industrial center. However, Economic hard times and job losses have changed the face of Georgetown, and the low rents and amazing buildings have drawn artists from across the northwest to this unique intellectual oasis.
That is what Georgetown is, then, a homeland between railroad tracks and syscrapers for Seattle’s dispossessed, the artistic van guard of the northwest, the place where marginalia truly takes center stage. An area full of contradictions, but as full of beauty, love, and integrity as any in the nation.
Want to read more about what’s going on in Georgetown? Check out the areas unofficial home online Here.

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