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Built in 1925, this building was occupied by Mrs. Ethel P. Simpson by 1938. Kena Jensen purchased the residence in July of 1939. That same year, the Jensen’s added a room in the basement. In 1955 the building underwent a substantial exterior renovation. It was originally a Mission Revival-influenced building with a flat roof, parapet, and small projecting clay tile roofs above the windows and a Colonial Revival style entrance. It became a Modern style, hip roof residence with broad, closed, overhanging eaves. The extent, dramatic nature and completeness of this change set the building apart as unique within the neighborhood. The Jensen’s resided in the building through 1968.
The Mount Baker neighborhood comprises two north-south tending ridges located southeast of downtown Seattle along Lake Washington. Initial development of the area occurred relatively late, post-1900, following the construction of the Rainier Avenue Electric Street Railway in the 1890s. York Station on Rainier Avenue and the Dose Addition were developed earlier than the Mount Baker Park Addition, platted in 1907 by the Hunter Tract Improvement Company. The Mount Baker Park Addition represents the core of the neighborhood and is its primary character-defining feature. Mount Baker Park is one of Seattle’s earliest planned residential communities that successfully integrated the natural environment and a relatively exclusive residential neighborhood in its layout of lots, streets, boulevards, and parks. The houses, primarily built between 1905 and 1929, reflect a variety of eclectic and Northwest-based architectural styles, and include designs by many prominent local architects.
Other important influences were the streetcar connection with downtown Seattle, the integration of local parks and boulevards into the Olmsted system, the construction of Franklin High School in 1912, and the building of the Mount Baker tunnel and Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge to Mercer Island in 1940. Today this middle-to-upper income neighborhood remains predominantly residential, is home to an ethnically diverse population, and retains much of its planned character.
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