Browse Seattle People Directories

Seattle People Directory Landscape

Seattle has no single official surname index for every resident or public worker. Useful people directories are split among city departments, Washington agencies, the University of Washington, King County record systems, professional regulators, and historical collections. Start with the directory whose purpose fits the person or time period.

For current public contacts, use the agency or campus listing. For an owner, use the assessment roll. For a past resident, move to the Seattle Public Library scans and Municipal Archives volumes. Public-record disclosure rules and copy requests belong to the Seattle public records access system.

Seattle Staff Directory Routes

The Seattle city contact directory is a routing page, not a citywide employee-name database. It points to departments, elected officials, boards, media contacts, and customer service centers. The former unified employee search was discontinued, so a missing surname does not show that a person lacks a city role.

Use the relevant department roster or main line. Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections publishes an employee dataset through the city Open Data portal, while boards and elected-official pages carry their own public rosters. The general contact route is 206-684-CITY (2489). For older municipal workers, Seattle Municipal Archives holds separate employee phone books.

The official Seattle contact directory shows how the city now organizes those routes.

The department-first layout makes the office or board a better starting point than a broad surname query.

Seattle State Employee Directory Search

The Washington state employee directory covers state agencies rather than City of Seattle or King County staff. It supports first name, last name, and agency searches. A searcher can use either a name or an agency, which helps when spelling is uncertain but the office is known.

The state contacts screen presents these three directory paths.

This is the practical replacement when the person works for Washington rather than Seattle’s municipal government.

UW People Directory Boundaries

The University of Washington people directory publicly searches faculty and staff. Its controls include a name term, search-by selector, Faculty/Staff Only checkbox, and Full or Summary result detail. Student searches require authentication and follow student privacy settings.

A public staff entry may show a preferred name and work contact data selected for publication. The directory’s notice invokes Washington’s noncommercial-use restriction. Search results are therefore a campus contact tool, not a source for private student information.

Full result

The more detailed public faculty or staff view.

Summary result

A compact listing for scanning similar names.

FERPA gate

The privacy and login boundary applied to student searches.

The UW search page makes the faculty, staff, and student boundary visible.

The public Faculty/Staff option is the proper route for locating a campus office contact.

Seattle Directory Entry Details

Departmental directories can be richer than a campus-wide result. The UW Libraries staff directory filters by search text, associated location, department, and consultations. Expandable cards provide enough detail to separate staff members with similar names.

A sample observed entry listed Trish Addison, Grants and Contracts Fiscal Specialist in Budget and Finance, with work phone and email. That inventory shows why a departmental directory is useful after a broad UW name result.

Seattle Business Name Directory

The City’s Active Business License Tax Certificate dataset works as a daily refreshed directory of legal names, trade names, addresses, phone numbers, industry descriptions, start dates, city account numbers, and UBI identifiers. Roughly 83,800 active public rows were present when researched.

Use the Socrata table to search a person, legal entity, or DBA and export or filter the results. The tabular version is strongest for a name or trade name; the GIS version is better for businesses around an address. A license row confirms a city tax-certificate record, not the identity of every person behind the enterprise.

The broader Washington Corporations and Charities Filing System searches a business name or UBI and may identify registered agents or governors.

Together, the city dataset and state filing directory separate a local license record from the entity’s state formation file.

Seattle Owner Name Directories

King County’s eReal Property roll searches current owners by name, address, or parcel. A report can show the taxpayer, parcel number, situs address, mailing address, legal description, values, and sale references. Situs means the physical property. A taxpayer mailing address may be elsewhere and does not prove residence.

Landmark works as a second people directory for parties to deeds, liens, mortgages, and other recorded instruments. Its name search uses the form “Last, First” and covers the online index from 1976 forward. It has no street-address field. Pre-1976 grantor and grantee indexes require King County Archives microfilm.

Use the assessment roll for the current taxpayer link and Landmark for recorded parties. Neither is a resident phone book, and assessment data alone is not a title certificate.

Seattle Professional People Directories

Official professional directories answer a different question: whether a credential or registration is current and whether published discipline exists. The Washington Department of Health Provider Credential Search accepts credential number, first or last name, business name, and license type. Results may show credential type, status, endorsements, and discipline links.

• The Washington State Bar Legal Directory lists lawyers, LLLTs, LPOs, house counsel, and foreign law consultants with license and work-contact details.
• Labor & Industries verifies contractors, tradespeople, and businesses by name, registration, or UBI, with bond, insurance, and infraction data.
• Department of Licensing tools cover real estate, cosmetology, and other regulated professions.
• The Department of Revenue Business Lookup distinguishes tax accounts, reseller permits, and general business licenses.

These official directories are best for status checks. Name matches should be confirmed with a license or credential number when several people share a name.

Historical Seattle People Directories

The Seattle Public Library city directory collection spans selected regional and city volumes from 1867 through 1940. Entries can give a resident’s name, occupation, and address, while business pages and ads connect people to firms, churches, schools, and societies.

The SPL directory viewer supports full-text search and page browsing.

When OCR misses small print, initials, or an abbreviation, browse the alphabetical section or the relevant address pages.

Reverse Seattle Address Directories

Seattle’s earliest digitized reverse directory is the 1928 Seattle House and Street Directory. Address-first editions from 1931 and 1934 follow. They reverse the usual lookup: begin with a street address, then find the household or business listed there.

That method is especially useful when a building is known but the occupant is not. Keep occupant and owner distinct by comparing the directory with the King County assessment roll and deeds. Seattle’s 1961 directional street change can also make an address appear to vanish; Municipal Archives before-and-after maps help normalize it.

Seattle’s geography changed earlier as well. Eight independent towns were annexed between 1905 and 1910. Search Ballard’s own volumes before May 1907, and use former-town names for West Seattle, Columbia, Georgetown, South Park, Ravenna, and Southeast Seattle when the date demands it.

Rare Seattle Name Directories

Seattle Municipal Archives preserves compact sources that function like unusual people directories. The 1890 Ballard census contains 1,636 names and ages. The 1907 West Seattle census lists 7,176 people with neighborhoods and sometimes ages. Both can bridge gaps between federal census schedules.

A Denny Park cemetery-removal register records burials from 1861 through 1884 and their reburial destinations. City Light’s 1918 waterfront passes combine a photograph, name, address, nationality, occupation, and employee name. These dense records can distinguish people who are hard to separate in a standard address book.

The SPL Genealogy Collection adds more than 40,000 bound volumes plus periodicals and microfilm, with librarian and Seattle Genealogical Society help. Obituaries and cemetery records should still be checked against certificates, newspapers, or cemetery offices.