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Built in 1919, this building was purchased by Joseph and Erminis Lucente in August of 1937. Mr. Lucente worked as an agent for the New World Life Insurance Company. By 1938 through 1953, Nick E. Paolella resided in the building. By 1955 through 1968, Allan A. and Leona M. Miettunen occupied the building.
A neighborhood of Italian immigrants and their businesses developed in the North Rainier Valley and northeast Beacon Hill. Starting around 1900, Italian immigrants came to Seattle to work in coal mines and as construction laborers and farmers. The Italian immigrants may have settled in this area because of its inexpensive housing, convenient location near downtown, and potential for small farm plots in the North Rainier Valley. This neighborhood, which became known as “Garlic Gulch” or “Little Italy,” centered on South Atlantic Street and Rainier Avenue South. In 1915, about 200 families lived in a 90-square-block area along Rainier Avenue from Lane Street on the north to Mount Baker Park on the south. Many Italian-owned businesses were located in the area, including food imports, Borracchini’s Bakery, Oberto Sausage Company, produce stands, grocery stores, a nursery (Malmo’s), drug stores, and other shops.
Our Lady of Mount Virgin Catholic Church at 1531 Bradner Place South, built in 1913, was the hub of the Italian community and operated a Catholic School that offered Italian lessons. Most of the remaining structures in the Italian neighborhood were razed during construction of I-90 in the 1970s and 1980s.
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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