Fremont, Seattle

Fremont is a neighborhood in northern Seattle, Washington, United States. Originally a separate city, it was annexed to Seattle in 1891. It is named after Fremont, Nebraska, the hometown of two of its founders: Luther H. Griffith and Edward Blewett.

Fremont is situated along the Fremont Cut of the Lake Washington Ship Canal to the north of Queen Anne, the east of Ballard, the south of Phinney Ridge, and the southwest of Wallingford. Its boundaries are not formally fixed, but they can be thought of as consisting of the Ship Canal to the south, Stone Way N. to the east, N. 50th Street to the north, and 8th Avenue N.W. to the west.

The neighborhood's main thoroughfares are Fremont and Aurora Avenues N. (north- and southbound) and N. 46th, 45th, 36th, and 34th Streets (east- and westbound). The Aurora Bridge (George Washington Memorial Bridge) carries Aurora Avenue (State Route 99) over the Ship Canal to the top of Queen Anne Hill, and the Fremont Bridge carries Fremont Avenue over the canal to the hill's base. A major shopping district is centered on Fremont Avenue N. just north of the bridge.

Fremont is sometimes referred to as "The People's Republic of Fremont" or "The Artists' Republic of Fremont," and was at one time a center of counterculture; however, the neighborhood has become somewhat gentrified since the 1990s. It remains home to a controversial statue of Vladimir Lenin salvaged from Slovakia by an art lover from Washington state who was teaching in the area at the time. After the 1989 fall of the Communist government, he brought the statue to Fremont with money raised through a mortgage on his house. The Fremont Troll is an 18-foot-tall (5 m) concrete sculpture of a troll crushing a Volkswagen Beetle in its left hand, created in 1990 and situated under the north end of the Aurora Bridge. The street running under the bridge and ending at the Troll was renamed Troll Avenue N. in 2005.

The neighborhood also features various signs giving advice such as "set your watch back five minutes," "set your watch forward five minutes," and "throw your watch away." Other landmarks include the Fremont Rocket, a Fairchild C-119 tail boom modified to resemble a missile, and the outdoor sculpture Waiting for the Interurban.

Since the early 1970s some Fremont residents have been referring to their neighborhood as "The Center of the Universe" (which also appears on a large "Welcome" sign). An unofficial motto "De Libertas Quirkas" ("Freedom to be Peculiar" in mock Latin) appears in brochures and websites about the area.

The Fremont Arts Council sponsors several highly attended annual events in Fremont. The Summer Solstice Parade & Pageant has made Fremont famous for its nude Solstice Cyclists. Another event is Troll-a-ween.

Also important to Fremont is the large block on Linden Avenue N. that contains the B.F. Day Elementary School and B.F. Day Playground, two separate entities. B.F. Day is the longest continually operating school in the Seattle school district, having been founded in 1892.