Goodbye Edith Macefield, Ballardite Who Defied Developers

June 17, 2:51 PMSeattle People ExaminerLaura Vecsey

Previous Next

1 comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Seattle People Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

 Somewhere in heaven, there's a little Craftsman bungalow waiting for the arrival of Edith Macefield. And hopefully, this little house in the great beyond will not be boxed in by six-story walls of steel girders and concrete, the way Edith Macefield's home in Ballard was in the final years of the Ballard resident's life.

Myballard.com is reporting today that Macefield, 86, died Sunday after emergency vehicles were seen coming and going from her abode on N.W. 46th St. -- the one she refused to sell to developers for $1 million.

Trader Joe's will come to Ballard. So, too, a new fitness center. All signs of progress will continue off that bustling, hot little real-estate/retail area beneath the Ballard Bridge. No doubt, Macefield's house will now succumb to the tear-down she avoided in her battle to stay in the house that had been her home the past 56 years.

Edith Macefield fought the good fight; a one-woman resistence movement against the raging tide of development "progress." Now let's hope she's off to a more permanently hospitable dwelling, one without cranes and jackhammers and cement trucks rattling her windows and doors.