Seattle Met composite. Photographs by Rudy Willingham, Carlton Canary, and Chona Kasinger.

You won’t find a Seattle neighborhood with a more fitting name than Beacon Hill. Forget that its moniker evokes a moneyed swath of Boston. For decades, the ridge just south of downtown has beckoned working-class residents from myriad cultures to settle atop its inclusive perch. It’s a place with no racial majority, a community where you can coin a civil rights organization El Centro de la Raza—“the Center for People of All Races”—without sounding quixotic. That diversity has spawned a robust restaurant scene catering to just about any palate, including those who have driven up home prices in recent years. Yes, gentrification poses a threat to the area’s cultural medley. But Beacon Hill has never been one to choose its inhabitants, only to sate them.