Emmett Watson

Who was Emmett Watson?

Emmett Watson was an American newspaper columnist in Seattle, Washington whose columns ran in a number of Seattle newspapers over a span of more than fifty years. Initially a sportswriter, he is primarily known for authoring a social commentary column for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from 1956 until 1982, when he moved to The Seattle Times and continued there as a columnist until shortly before his death in 2001.

Watson, who grew up in Seattle in the 1920s and 1930s, was a tireless advocate, through his column as well as through a fictional organization he created called Lesser Seattle, for limiting the seemingly unbridled growth and urban renewal that dramatically altered the Seattle landscape during the second half of the twentieth century.