University of Washington

In the 1850s, the Governor of Washington Territory and some of his Seattle-based friends and business associates, including a prominent Methodist minister, put their heads together to figure out a way to advance two causes close to their hearts: the prospect of statehood for the territory and the economic welfare of the city of Seattle.

At first, the Seattle city fathers argued in favor of moving the territorial capital from Olympia to their own city. However, a better plan was eventually decided upon: they would build a university in Seattle. The idea was that an institution of higher education would function both as evidence of Washington Territory’s readiness for statehood and as a stimulus to Seattle’s economic development.

This explains why the Territorial University of Washington, occupying a valuable plot of land in downtown Seattle, opened its doors in 1861—long before statehood was finally achieved in 1889.

After the latter date, both the new State of Washington and the City of Seattle began to grow rapidly. It was soon found that the needs of the students and faculty of the former territorial university—now called simply the University of Washington (UW)—had outgrown the school’s original downtown campus, where there was little room for expansion. Accordingly, in 1895 UW was moved to a more spacious location in the Union Bay neighborhood of what is now Northeast Seattle.

Today, UW—together with its two additional campuses in Bothell and Tacoma (north and south of Seattle, respectively)—boasts some 56,000 students, and a nearly $3 billion endowment. Such numbers have enabled UW to build a faculty and offer a curriculum that are second-to-none among state university systems in the US.

Seven UW-affiliated persons have won the Nobel Prize, including:

• Hans Georg Dehmelt & David Thouless—physics
• Edmond Fischer, Leland Hartwell, & Linda Buck—physiology or medicine

Among other notable UW-connected folks, we may mention:

• Pioneering photographer, Imogen Cunningham
• Television journalist, Chet Huntley
• Actors Jim Caviezel, Dyan Cannon & Kyle MacLachlan
• Martial arts adept, film actor, and director, Bruce Lee
• Painter and photographer, Chuck Close
• Glass artist, Dale Chihuly
• Architect, Minoru Yamasaki
• Novelist and essayist, Marilynne Robinson