This street, like W Park Drive E — its twin on the other side of Montlake Boulevard E — was created in 1908 as part of Montlake Park, an Addition to the City of Seattle, and was named after what is now East Montlake Park.
It begins at the east end of E Hamlin Street by the old location of the Museum of History and Industry (currently a staging area for the Montlake Project portion of the rebuilding of Washington State Route 520) and goes 300 feet north to E Shelby Street.
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.