Pike Street  Pike Street is an east-west street in Seattle. It extends from Pike Place above Seattle's saltwater waterfront at Elliott Bay through Downtown Seattle, across Capitol Hill to the freshwater shore of Lake Washington at Lake Washington Boulevard. A segment less than a block long exists at Alaskan Way on Elliot Bay, connected to the rest of the street only by the pedestrian Pike Street Hillclimb; the bottom of the hillclimb under the Alaskan Way Viaduct was the original shoreline of the city before major modification and construction of the Seattle Seawall. It is included in the south-to-north mnemonic "Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest" for the street layout of Seattle. The street was one of the original named streets of Seattle in Arthur A. Denny's 1869 platting. It was named by him for John Pike, architect and builder of the Washington Territorial University in what is now the Metropolitan Tract of downtown Seattle. Until the early 20th century Denny Regrade leveled Denny Hill, it was the easiest way from the waterfront to Lake Union, and the main street of the north end of the city (boundaries now defined roughly by Downtown Seattle). In 1872, Seattle's first railroad, Seattle Coal & Transportation Company, followed Pike Street to deliver Newcastle, King County coal to Elliot Bay transshipped via Lake Washington and Lake Union. It lasted until 1878 when Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad built a direct line from the fields, around the lake and through Renton. The Pike–Pine corridor on Capitol Hill was once the city's center for automobile sales. After this moved to the suburbs, rents declined and it became a hub for gay culture and Seattle's grunge scene. Gentrification the 21st century brought increasing property values. "The Seattle Times" said, "For decades, the Pike-Pine corridor between First and Third avenues has been known for run-down buildings, parking lots prone to drug deals and heroin addicts ... effectively a dam separating Pike Place Market and its 9 million annual visitors from the city's shopping and convention areas". In the 21st century, Second and Third Avenues between the same two streets has a similar reputation. The Seattle Business Association CEO said "drug dealers sort of own the real estate in that part of downtown" and the mayor called it "a dangerous open-air drug market" with 10,000 calls for police response in one year, according to the city and the FBI. The U.S. Department of Justice cited "what has become an open air drug market at Pike/Pine and Third Avenue in downtown Seattle" in 2015.