Gas Works Park
City Park · Seattle, Washington
Twenty acres on the north shore of Lake Union built on the remains of the Seattle Gas Light Company's coal gasification plant, which ran from 1906 to 1956 and left the soil badly contaminated. Rather than demolish the plant, the city kept the cracking towers as sculpture and capped the ground beneath a grass mound - an approach that was genuinely radical in 1975 and is now taught as a landmark of post-industrial landscape design. The view from the mound back across the lake to downtown is the reason most people come.
2101 North Northlake Way, Seattle, Washington, 98103, United States
Open daily 6 AM to 10 PM, free. The play barn and the surviving exhauster-compressor building are open during daylight. The park is a major Fourth of July fireworks viewing site and is ticketed and access-controlled on that one night, which catches people out.