| Historic Name: |
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Common Name: |
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| Style: |
Arts & Crafts |
Neighborhood: |
Mount Baker |
| Built By: |
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Year Built: |
1919 |
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| Significance |
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Construction of this building began in November of 1919 and was completed by August of 1920 at a total cost of $6,000. John D. Hall owned the building. In August of 1922, a bedroom dormer was added for $100. V. E. Ambrose purchased the property in April of 1928. Walter F. and Mrs. Effie L. Birk moved to the residence between 1928 and 1933. By 1939, Mr. Birk worked as a division manager with Frederick & Nelson. In August of 1935, brick veneer was added around the first story of the building at a cost of $600 by building owner Mrs. Eliza Ambrose. In June of 1940, Eliza DeGennazzo purchased the residence. Then in June of 1947, the residence sold for $11,500. Wayne P. Knapp purchased the building in May of 1960. The property sold in April of 1965 for $22,500.
The Hunter Tract Improvement Company and R.V. and Nellie R. Ankeny filed the plat of the Mount Baker Park Addition in June 1907, and it was recorded by the County on July 15, 1907. The plat covered a seventy-block area, a total of about 200 acres.
The Hunter Tract Improvement Company, formed by developer J.C. Hunter in 1905, purchased property formerly owned by David Denny from Daniel Jones, developer. By this time, the Olmsted Brothers had completed their 1903 plan for Seattle’s parks and boulevards system and recommended a “Mount Baker Park” on the proposed parkway along Lake Washington. For the initial layout and planning of the area, the Hunter Tract Improvement Company considered hiring the Olmsted Brothers in 1906, but selected George F. Cotterill of the engineering firm, Cotterill and Whitworth. Cotterill's plan was based on the early bicycle trails he designed, which were also a basis for the Olmsted plan. Landscape architect Edward O. Schwagerl, who served as Seattle’s Parks Superintendent from 1892-1895, was responsible for the landscape design. Another partner in the plat design was the Sawyer Brothers, an engineering firm.
The Hunter Tract Improvement Company intended to create an exclusive upper-income community, and deeds of sale contained restrictive covenants relating to minimum setbacks and the value of structures on the lots. (No house costing less than $2,000 to $5,000 per lot, depending on location, was permitted in the subdivision.) The Mount Baker Park subdivision was restricted to single family residences only, except for a single commercial building at Thirty-Fifth Avenue South and South McClellan Street.
The Mount Baker plat has a rich array of residential buildings, which include many Craftsman style houses and a variety of eclectic styles. A substantial number of the houses are designs by Seattle’s most prominent architects of their time, including Ellsworth Storey, Bebb & Mendel, Saunders & Lawton, Graham & Myers, Charles Haynes, Andrew Willatzen, Arthur Loveless, and Edwin Ivey. Charles Haynes was the corporate architect for the Hunter Improvement Company and designed many of the early houses in the subdivision. The area also includes many builder-designed Craftsman style houses, several of which were featured in Bungalow Magazine. The majority of the older houses in the neighborhood were built in two general time periods: an early phase from 1905 to about 1915 or 1920, and a second phase from 1920 to 1929.
Mount Baker Park was one of the largest planned communities in Seattle at the time of its platting. It was the first subdivision to be incorporated into larger city planning efforts and included in the Olmsted Brothers’ plans for the city’s system of parks and boulevards. Public dedication of Mount Baker Park, the small parks and the boulevards was an important design feature of the Mount Baker Park subdivision. The plat layout reflects a combination of the gridiron street layout that connects with the Seattle street network and curvilinear streets and boulevards that take advantage of the natural topography of the area, including the two main boulevards, Mount Baker Boulevard and Hunter Boulevard. The layout of the north-south streets south of Mount Baker Park, in particular, takes advantage of the views from the ridge that slopes down to the lake.
The Mount Baker Park Addition appealed to a wealthy clientele who were attracted to life in an exclusive planned “suburban” community. Many of Seattle’s leading citizens have resided in the area over the years.
The residences flanking Mount Baker Boulevard South provide integral character-defining elements to the overall boulevard composition through their purposeful orientation towards the curvilinear boulevard, their general massing, heights, setbacks, dates of construction, and well-preserved set of architectural style variations. The modest-sized building lots are configured as part of the overall boulevard design to create an architectural edge to the linear open space that includes the landscaped median between the divided roadways, the hard surfaced roadways, curbs and sidewalks and the front yards and lawns. The bordering residences and their individual building elements remain largely intact from the 1920’s, conveying the original well-to-do middle class composition of the neighborhood.
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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| Appearance |
| Built in 1919, this Arts & Crafts style, single-family dwelling sets on a rectangular lot. The building is oriented to Mount Baker Boulevard South and the flat site is elevated approximately 1’ above the street. This 1365 square foot, one-and-a-half story house with a half daylight basement features a nearly square plan, 39’ by 35’, with a 5’ by 9’ front porch. A poured concrete foundation supports the wood frame, brick veneer-clad superstructure. Asphalt composition roofing covers the gable roof. The pedimented dormer features clapboard siding. Minimal eave and gable overhangs with eave returns and a well-defined fascia define the roofline character. First story windows on the front facade feature single large panes flanked by stacked smaller panes (five each side). Double hung wood sash 9:1 windows provide day lighting into the half story with double hung wood sash multiple lite windows on all secondary facades. The main entrance features a clipped gable roof with eave returns and fascia carried on brick columns. A segmented arch frames the entrance reached by a direct flight of concrete stairs. An exterior, side-gable brick chimney services the building. |
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| Status: |
Yes - Inventory |
| Classication: |
Building |
District Status: |
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| Cladding(s): |
Brick |
Foundation(s): |
Concrete - Poured |
| Roof Type(s): |
Gable, Gable - Clipped |
Roof Material(s): |
Asphalt/Composition |
| Building Type: |
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Plan: |
Square |
| Structural System: |
Balloon Frame/Platform Frame |
No. of Stories: |
one & ½ |
| Unit Theme(s): |
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| Integrity |
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Changes to Plan: |
Intact |
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Changes to Original Cladding: |
Intact |
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Changes to Windows: |
Intact |
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| Major Bibliographic References |
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City of Seattle DCLU Microfilm Records.
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King County Property Record Card (c. 1938-1972), Washington State Archives.
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Polk's Seattle Directories, 1890-1996.
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City of Seattle. Survey of City-Owned Historic Resources. Prepared by Cathy Wickwire, Seattle, 2001. Forms for Ravenna Park structures.
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Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority. "Mount Baker: An Inventory of Buildings and Urban Design Resources."
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Mount Baker Community Club. Flowers We All Love Best in Mount Baker Park, (reprint of 1915 ed.)
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Tobin, Caroline. (2004) "Mount Baker Historic Context Statement."
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Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects. Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994.
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De Freece, Helen N, “Reminiscences of Early Years in Mount Baker Park,” Seattle Times, August 16, 1959.
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Mount Baker: An Inventory of Buildings and Urban Design Resources. Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority. Consultants: Folke Nyberg, Victor Steinbrueck. 1976.
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Mount Baker Park Improvement Club, “Flowers We All Love Best in Mount Baker Park.” Seattle, 1914. Reprinted 1987. Gerrard Beattie and Knapp Realtors.
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