Cal Anderson Park

Cal Anderson Park is a 7.3-acre green in the heart of Seattle's Capitol Hill neighbourhood, renamed on 15 June 2003 for Washington State's first openly gay elected official. Cal Anderson (1948-1995) served in the Washington State House of Representatives from 1987 until his death from AIDS-related complications in 1995; his eight-year legislative career included authorship of Washington's first HIV/AIDS legislation (1989) and Washington State's first same-sex-partnership recognition for state employees (1993). The park's renaming was one of the earliest US municipal parks named for an openly gay person, and by scale — 7.3 acres in the heart of a major American city — it is the largest municipal park in the country named for an openly gay person. Cal Anderson had lived in Capitol Hill for the last 15 years of his life and had specifically requested the renaming in his will. The park itself is a rebuilt 2005 landscape by Berger Partnership — a fountain plaza at the north end, a reflecting pool, an athletic field, and a series of curved walking paths — that hosts Seattle's Pride opening ceremony each June, the annual Cal Anderson memorial gathering each August 4th (Cal Anderson's death date), and regular casual use as a Capitol Hill queer social ground. Since 2021 it has also anchored the AIDS Memorial Pathway (see separate entry) with Yegizaw Michael's *Ribbon of Light* canopy at the park's central plaza. Free, open dawn to dusk. Capitol Hill light-rail station is a two-minute walk. Best visited late afternoon; combine with the AIDS Memorial Pathway walk south to Broadway or with Wildrose (see separate entry) five minutes east for a Capitol Hill queer-heritage half-day.