This street was created in 1926 as part of Belvoir, an Addition to the City of Seattle, filed by the executor of the estate of William Harvey “Uncle Joe” Surber (1834–1923) (Surber Drive NE). Surber had homesteaded what is now Laurelhurst in 1861, and an article in the September 19, 1926, issue of The Seattle Times noted that Belvoir was “one of the last, if not the last tract of land that [had] been held intact by its owners since pioneer days.”
NE Belvoir Place begins at Surber Drive NE and goes around 850 feet northeast to 41st Avenue NE. (There is also a park named Belvoir Place; located 1,000 feet to the southeast, it is a narrow parcel that stretches from 42nd Avenue NE to Union Bay.)
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.
I have read some where that Wiiliam “Joe” Surber had a Native American wife. in your research, have you come across this bit of knowledge. Please let me know if you have. Thanks.
I haven’t, but now you’ve got me intrigued! I’m going to ask Valarie Bunn, who has an excellent piece on Surber on her blog, Wedgwood in Seattle History, if she knows anything about this.
Census records do not show anyone living with Joe Surber until his two nieces came to keep house for him. They survived him (he died 1923) but the house burned down a few years later.