Like Viewmont Way W, Crestmont Place W, Eastmont Way W, Westmont Way W, and Piedmont Place W, this street was created in 1915 as part of the plat of Carleton Park, their common mont element referring to the fact that, as The Seattle Times wrote, the “entire district commands an unobstructible view of the Cascade and Olympic Mountains.” Like Piedmont Place W, Montvale Court W lies at the foot of the western Magnolia hill as it slopes down to Pleasant Valley (of which vale is of course a variant).
Montvale Court W begins at 35th Avenue W south of Viewmont Way W and goes just over 300 feet northeast to Montvale Place W. (When it was originally platted, it formed a horseshoe-shaped loop back to 35th, but at some point the eastern and southeastern part of the street was renamed Montvale Place W.)
Born and raised in Seattle, Benjamin Donguk Lukoff had his interest in local history kindled at the age of six, when his father bought him settler granddaughter Sophie Frye Bass’s Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle at the gift shop of the Museum of History and Industry. He studied English, Russian, and linguistics at the University of Washington, and went on to earn his master’s in English linguistics from University College London. His book of rephotography, Seattle Then and Now, was published in 2010. An updated version came out in 2015.
