Beacon Hill overlooks downtown Seattle from the southeast and is distinguished by the 16-story Pacific Medical Center that rises from its northern end. The ridge extends southeast from First Hill between the Duwamish River and the Rainier Valley and rises to 350 feet in elevation. As close as Beacon Hill appears to downtown Seattle, geography has worked to keep the neighborhood distinct. The ridge saw scattered settlement as early as the 1850s, but remained largely undeveloped for several more decades. Union Army veteran and real estate developer M. Harwood Young (1846-1913) named the hill in 1889 for Boston’s historic Beacon Hill and built a streetcar line connecting the neighborhood to downtown.