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Green Lake Aqua Theater

1950 establishments in Washington (state)Demolished buildings and structures in Washington (state)Former music venues in the United StatesMusic venues in Washington (state)Theatres completed in 1950
Seattle Green Lake Aqua Theater 01
Seattle Green Lake Aqua Theater 01

The Green Lake Aqua Theater was an outdoor theater located at Green Lake in Seattle, Washington.The Aqua Theater was built in 1950 for the first Seafair Summer Festival in order to house an attraction called the Aqua Follies and their "swimusicals" - a combination of aqua ballet, stage dancing, and comedy. The first ever performance at the venue was on August 11, 1950.The theater's stage was round, and the orchestra pit nearby was recessed and floating. The theater had high diving platforms near the stage. Its grandstand was fan-shaped and built to a capacity of 5,600 seats. The venue also featured a "moat".The Aqua Follies continued to run during Seafair until 1965. Outside of the Seafair schedule the theater was the stage for plays and musicals whose directors always took advantage of the unique setting. In the summer of 1962, coinciding with the Century 21 Exposition, the Aqua Theater stage was host to a jazz festival, popular performers such as Bob Hope, two plays, and a special presentation of the Aqua Follies with 100 performers. On July 4, Gorgeous George wrestled Leo Garibaldi at the Aqua Theatre with the ring surrounded by water.After the World's Fair, summer productions languished (usually blamed on Seattle's unpredictable weather) the Aqua Theater was mostly abandoned. Led Zeppelin played a concert there in May 1969. During an August 1969 concert by the Grateful Dead the grandstand was found to be unsafe because of poor maintenance. Beginning in 1970 the theater was dismantled and re-purposed. The area to the right stage offers a pedestrian pier over the lake. To the left of the stage, crew shells are stored. A small craft center was put into the place formerly held by most of the grandstand. Some sections of the grandstand were left in place.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Green Lake Aqua Theater (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Green Lake Aqua Theater
Green Lake Trail, Seattle Phinney Ridge

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N 47.6716 ° E -122.3426 °
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Green Lake Small Craft Center

Green Lake Trail
98103 Seattle, Phinney Ridge
Washington, United States
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Seattle Green Lake Aqua Theater 01
Seattle Green Lake Aqua Theater 01
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Meridian, Seattle
Meridian, Seattle

Meridian or Tangletown is the part of Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood that lies north of N 50th Street, near Green Lake. Of note are its "K streets": Kensington, Kenwood, Keystone, and Kirkwood Places N.The concentration of mostly retail businesses on N 55th Street near Meridian Avenue is known variously as Tangletown or Meridian and considered by some to be more closely associated with Greenlake than Wallingford. The likely source for the name Tangletown is the irregular configuration of Seattle' s street grid in this transition zone, where Wallingford shades into the Green Lake neighborhood, some of which follow the contours of Green Lake, others conforming to the city's basic grid. An alternative explanation is that the neighborhood was given the name Tangletown years ago, when a streetcar interchange occupied the space where businesses and condominiums now stand. Meridian sometimes refers to a wider neighborhood than Tangletown, which refers strictly to the retail district. The name Meridian came from the Meridian Line, a streetcar line. The name became popular when it was used by brothers Stan and Milton Stapp who published the local newspaper, the North Central Outlook. They used the term to differentiate the area from the nearby neighborhoods of Greenlake and Wallingford.One of the neighborhood's principal landmarks The Keystone Building, built in 1910 by D.J. Orner & Son (see image below) has been the home of various businesses over the years. In 1938, the building housed the Barclay's Grocery, Kenwood Market and Sires Brother's Paint Company. From 1956 it became the longstanding Lamont's Food Center until the 1980s when it was converted to the Honey Bear Bakery, while the East side of the building became the M&R Grocer. Today the West corner of the building is home to the TangleTown Public House (the old Honeybear bakery) while the East side is now the Mighty-O Donuts headquarters. The neighborhood is bounded on the south by N 50th Street, beyond which is the rest of Wallingford; on the west by Green Lake Way N., beyond which is Woodland Park and Phinney Ridge; on the north by N 60th Street, beyond which is the Green Lake neighborhood, and on the east by Interstate 5, beyond which is the University District. Its main thoroughfares are Meridian Avenue N, Kirkwood Place N, and Latona Avenue NE (north- and southbound) and NE 56th Street (east- and westbound).