Ravenna is a neighborhood in northeastern Seattle, Washington named after Ravenna, Italy. Though Ravenna is considered a residential neighborhood, it also is home to several businesses, many of which are located in the University Village, a shopping mall. Ravenna Park, located near University Village and the walking or biking route connecting Green Lake to Burke–Gilman Trail, is located within the neighborhood. Ravenna and Ravenna-Bryant What is now Ravenna has been inhabited since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8000 BCE–10,000 years ago). The Native American Duwamish (before contact, the Dkhw’Duw’Absh, "the People of the Inside") tribe of the Lushootseed (Skagit-Nisqually) Coast Salish nations had the prominent village of SWAH-tsoo-gweel ("portage") on then-adjacent Union Bay, and what is now Ravenna was their backyard before the arrival of White settlers. The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway was built c. 1886 along what is now the Burke-Gilman Trail, following what was the shoreline past where the UW power plant and University Village are today. In 1890 mining and real estate magnate William Wirt Beck (1851-1944) filed the first plat on the 400 acres of land he owned covering most of the modern-day neighborhood, with the intention of creating an ideal community where his own home was one of the first to be built (and still stands several blocks East of the park). That same year he established the Seattle Female College, with classes held in Beck's home. Placement of churches and other civic structures would be modeled after the townsite's namesake, Ravenna, Italy. King County's first grist mill was also established at Ravenna in 1890 by the Ravenna Flouring Mill Company who built their mill along the railroad grade. 70 acres comprising old growth timber protected by a ravine were preserved by Beck for use as a park that would later become Ravenna Park. In 1891, a streetcar line followed 14th Avenue NE (what is now University Way NE, as illustrated in the Cowen's University Park Addition Seattle annex map below on this page), then followed near the southern boundary of what is now Ravenna Park, where the narrow right-of-way remains clearly visible beside the park. Ravenna Boulevard was built in 1903 as a small part of the Olmsted Brothers' grand plan for Seattle streets and parks. Ravenna incorporated as an independent town in 1906, which permitted Seattle to annex it in 1907. The original boundary of the Town of