By LEAH WEATHERSBY

In these days of skyrocketing real estate values and traffic congestion, it's easy to forget that even Seattle was once a forest, probably looking more like Snoqualmie Pass than the metropolitan area we know today.

Despite the fact that North Seattle at the turn of the century was more hospitable to loggers than urbanites, those that were here needed services, including public education.

As one of the earliest schools in Seattle, Latona Elementary's development vividly reflects that of North Seattle itself.

The Latona neighborhood (which is now part of the Wallingford district) first became part of the incorporated area of Seattle in 1890 along with the area encompassing Fremont, Green Lake and Salmon Bay. In 1891, a Seattle Board of Education report described the location of a new school, to be named Latona, as between Lincoln Avenue (now NE 42nd Street), Boise Street (now NE 40th Street), Clough Street (now 5th Avenue NE) and Logan Street (now 4th Avenue NE). In those days, Wallingford Avenue was still known as Elmer Street!

The first Latona School has a modest enterprise to say the least. It was a frame building with only four rooms. The staff was limited to three teachers and a principal, each of whom made $900 a year. Average attendance during the 1892-1893 school year was 122.7 students.

But Latona grew quickly. An eight-classroom building was erected at the Latona School site in 1906 and the four-room building was torn down several years later.

Back in those days, the little "burg" of Latona (named for the Greek goddess of darkness) was still a heavily wooded area. In fact, there was a deep ravine between 2nd Avenue NE and the school.

Miss Emma Small, an art supervisor, made several trips to the school which started which started with a trip across Lake Union on a passenger steamer, followed by a walk up a path which was part wooden sidewalk, part dirt trail.

As Seattle grew and modernized, so did Latona School. The "modern, brick" building was built in 1917, its plan was similar to that of the second Allen School building, now part of the Phinney Neighborhood Center. The south lot of the school was purchased in 1921 to expand the playground area.

Another big construction project, which affected Latona came in the late 1950s/early 1960s when I-5 was built east of the school. Attendance at the school dropped because dozens of families were forced to leave the area when the freeway took their homes. This was not the first important attendance decrease in Latona's history - when Hamilton Middle School opened in 1927 it had taken Latona's seventh and eighth graders. Extra space in their facility led to the school to offer special education classes.

Latona's sixth graders were transferred to Hamilton in 1972 , however, the influx of students from the old Interlake School, now the Wallingford Center, prompted the school district to shift the special education classes elsewhere.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Latona hosted several special programs including Alternative Elementary No. 3, Escuela Latona, which emphasized Spanish Language and Hispanic Culture, and a center for students recently arrived from Southeast Asia.

In the year 2000, the old Latona School made an even bigger mark on international education in Seattle with the opening of the John Stanford International School.

While an international school was a dream of the late Seattle Public Schools Superintendent John Stanford, current Superintendent Joseph Olchefske at first hinted that he might not follow through on the project. However, Latona, with its history of international programs, seemed like a perfect site.

The renovation, which began in 1999, demolished the 1917 building and added a three-story addition, designed by Bassetti Architects, to the 1906 building. The school focuses on Spanish and Japanese language education for kindergarten through fifth graders and has been extremely popular. It's a pleasant irony that a school once secluded in a forest now reaches out to the rest of the world. (