Cruising the Cybermansions
Click on the icons at
the bottom of this page for an interactive tour of Seattle's
cybermansions.
Not long
ago, the rich in Seattle were earnest bores who lived in interchangeable Tudors
tucked into old gated communities. They were Stimsons, Boeings, and Nordstroms,
and they made their money cutting down trees, building airplanes, and selling
shoes. Like the Cascade Mountains, they were "partially visible some of the
time, and completely visible none of time," a University of Washington
sociologist once said. The Cascades are still a rumor for much of the year. But
the rich have come out in force in this corner of the country once known for
its Scandinavian reserve. Their arena is Lake Washington, the 18-mile-long moat
that separates Seattle from the Eastside locales of Bellevue, Mercer Island,
Kirkland, and Redmond--global headquarters of
Slate
. The
transition of Lake Washington from a decent water-skiing pond into something
Gatsbyesque and gawk-worthy has been so dramatic that now some people visit the
Northwest for the sole purpose of staring at all the man-made creations on and
around the lake. Rather than disparage this trend or try to describe it with
one-dimensional, snide remarks, we offer instead our own tour.
Semiauthoritative, free, and interactive--with a few snide remarks
nonetheless.
Click to start the
tour.
On the tour, click on a
numbered circle to advance to that tour stop.
Click for
text-mostly version.
