Folks who stop by the Troll for a photo will soon have somewhere to sit and stay a while.
Friends of the Troll’s Knoll, a community group dedicated to maintaining and activating the green space around the Fremont Troll, has installed metal benches at several spots in Troll’s Knoll Forest. This includes a pair at City View Bluff that look out over north Lake Union, the Seattle skyline and, on a clear day, Mount Rainier.
Leo Griffin, president of Friends of the Troll’s Knoll, said visitors have been enjoying the new seating and hopes the bluff in particular will draw people up to a part of the site that often goes unnoticed.
More seating is still on the way. FOTK plans to install two basalt stone benches on the southeast and southwest sides of the Troll next week.
The basalt benches are by John Hoge, the same Fremont sculptor behind the Fremont Rocket and the “Mended Boulders” fountain near Fremont Avenue and 36th Street.
The group received grant funds from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, Fremont Neighborhood Council, and King County Council, District 4.
They originally hoped to install six basalt benches, but couldn’t fit the equipment needed through the narrow entrances to Troll’s Knoll Forest. Four of those benches are still available, and FOTK would welcome ideas for another Fremont location that could use them.
While the benches are going in, the Troll’s Knoll mushroom lantern sculptures are on their way out, at least for now.
The four concrete mushroom lanterns near the Troll were installed in April 2023, inspired by traditional stone lanterns. They were designed by Michiko Tanaka and sculpted by HaiYing Wu.
For two years, they sat untouched. Then in Spring 2025, vandals struck three times. FOTK repaired the damage twice, but decided after the third attack that it couldn’t keep up with the repair cycle. Around June 8 of this year, the mushrooms were damaged again when a cap was removed from one of the sculptures.
FOTK is now surplusing the concrete mushrooms and replacing them with new versions cast in marine grade stainless steel. The new sculptures will be cast in one piece, making them sturdier and harder to vandalize.
As for the retired concrete mushrooms, FOTK says it would prefer to keep them in public view rather than see them destroyed. The group is working with an architectural salvage group, Ballard Reuse, to take the sculptures.
FOTK’s collaborative approach with Tanaka and Wu reflects a federal law called the Visual Artists Rights Act, which gives artists certain rights over their work even after it’s installed on someone else’s property. That’s why FOTK worked with the artists on a replacement design rather than simply taking the damaged lanterns down. It’s also why the group is looking for the concrete originals a new public home through Ballard Reuse instead of scrapping them.
Those interested in supporting the bench and mushroom lantern projects can donate directly through Friends of the Troll’s Knoll’s Bonfire store, where proceeds from troll and moss turtle merchandise go toward current park projects. Frameup is selling posters from the Benches Fit for a Troll campaign.
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