It has a 19.1-acre (77,000 m2) public park on the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant, located on the north shore of Lake Union at the south end of the Wallingford neighborhood.

It was originally named Myrtle Edwards Park, after the city councilwoman who had spearheaded the drive to acquire the site, who died in a car crash in 1969.

Some stand as ruins, while others have been reconditioned, painted, and incorporated into a children's "play barn" structure, constructed in part from what was the plant's exhauster-compressor building.

The park originally constituted one end of the Burke–Gilman Trail, laid out along the abandoned right-of-way of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway.

[4] Although the presence of organic pollutants had been substantially reduced by the mid-1980s, the US Environmental Protection Agency and Washington State Department of Ecology required additional measures, including removing and capping wastes, and air sparging in the southeast portion of the site to try to remove benzene that was a theoretical source of pollutants reaching Lake Union via ground water.

Among the people who participated in the vigil at were former congressman and future governor Mike Lowry, then-city-councilperson Sue Donaldson, 1960s icon Timothy Leary, and beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

[9] Gas Works Park occupies a 20.5 acres (8.3 hectares) promontory between the northwest and northeast arms of Lake Union.

Dense forests came to the water's edge and the lake drained into Salmon Bay through a stream "full of windfalls and brush, impassable even for a canoe".

In the 1880s came the Denny sawmill at the south end of Lake Union, brick manufacturing, ship building, a tannery, and iron works.

(Olmsted Brothers 1903, p. 47) In 1911, Virgil Bogue produced a civic master plan for Seattle's Municipal Plans Commission in which he promoted the idea of Lake Union as an industrial area: "The fact that (Lake Union) is located in the very heart of the city indicates that if properly developed it will become a most important factor in the commercial and business activities of the city."

The gas was made from coal up to 1937 when the high cost of operating the old coke oven and coal-gas generating sets forced a change-over to oil.

Since by-products from gas manufacturing had strong markets of their own, new equipment was installed at the same time to produce "Gasco charcoal briquets", toluene, solvent naphtha, sulfur, xylene, and resin tar.

[citation needed] By 1954, the Lake Station plant used 1,071 miles (1,724 km) of gas main to serve Seattle, Renton, Kent and Tukwila.

[citation needed] The abandoned gas-production plant and its land were deeded to the city of Seattle in 1975 and Gas Works Park was opened to the public that same year.

[10] The Washington State Department of Ecology announced plans in 2022 to begin the final efforts in soil and shoreline remediation, comprising an estimated area of 50.0-acre (20.2 ha) surrounding the park.

The Earth Mound, Prow, and Lawns are open areas intended for passive and active recreation and offer magnificent views.

Introspection and retreat are easily accomplished without physical isolation, but facilities for social interaction with persons other than intimate friends are more scarce with respect to population growth.

(Master Plan, 1971) Because of the Gas Plant structures and the attractive setting, GWP complements the rich heritage of Seattle's Post-Victorian parks and offers expanded programs in ways that the latter cannot.

[4][13] Part of the master plan, known as the "Great Mound", hill was molded out of thousands of cubic yards of rubble from building foundations covered with fresh topsoil.

Formed out of concrete and delineated with rocks, shells, glass, bronze and many other materials, the sundial tells time by using the body of the visitor as the gnomon.

This process has decontaminated the soil and allowed for the growth of field grass which makes possible constant, hard use with low maintenance.

For each pair of wash boxes there is one primary scrubber that rests on a concrete pedestal and stands 48 ft (15 m) tall (11.5 feet [3.5 m] diameter).

The park represents a complete reversal from a period when industrial monuments were regarded, even by preservationists, as ugly intrusions on the landscape, to a time when such structures as the gas works are recognized for their potential ability to enhance the urban experience."

(NY Times, 8/30/75) The possibility for National Historic Landmark status was recognized in 1971 when Victor Steinbrueck inventoried the Gas Works and Eric DeLony of the National Park Service wrote: "Gas Works Park will not only be a unique first in the United States, if not the world, but will set an important precedent for the future preservation of industrial structure through an imaginative plan for adaptive use.

Although its primary product was city gas for energy, the plant also manufactured other basic products necessary for urban growth: tar for roofing; lampblack for pigment in tires and ink; charcoal briquets for odor-free and efficient home heating; sulfur for insecticides, ammonium sulfate, and sulfuric acid; and toluene for use in explosives.

Through these products the gas works contributed in an integral way not only to daily commercial and domestic life in Seattle but also to interests at a national level.

[citation needed] The structures and machinery standing in GWP today are remnants of the Industrial Revolution that transformed the face of the world.

43–45) In addition to its early history, the impact of Gas Works Park on land reclamation and industrial preservation attitudes and techniques extends beyond Seattle.

The jury for the President's Award of Excellence stated: "A remarkably original and attractive example of how to reclaim a seemingly hopeless and obsolete industrial installation.

"The black shapes of the towers on their grassy point leap out with startling clarity against the bright collage of the shoreline, silhouettes that might be the pictogram for the works of industrial man."