| Historic Name: |
Madison Park Bathhouse |
Common Name: |
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| Style: |
Colonial, Colonial - Colonial Revival |
Neighborhood: |
Capitol Hill |
| Built By: |
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Year Built: |
1919 |
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| Significance |
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In the opinion of the survey, this property appears to meet the criteria of the National Register of Historic Places. |
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In the opinion of the survey, this property appears to meet the criteria of the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. |
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This attractive wood frame bathhouse was constructed in three phases over a twenty-year period between 1919 and 1938. Beginning in the late 1880s, the site had been developed as a private amusement park at the Lake Washington terminus of the Madison Street Cable Railway. With the financial backing of other individuals, Judge John J. McGilvra developed the line from downtown Seattle in order to provide access to the large tract of land he owned at the eastern end of Madison Street. A native of New York, Judge McGilvra came to Olympia in 1861 after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him United States Attorney for the Washington Territory. When his term ended three years later, Judge McGilvra moved to Seattle where he acquired several hundred acres of land on the shores of Lake Washington and built a home for his family, which he called Laurel Shade. By the later 1860s, Judge McGilvra had cut a wagon road straight through the wilderness to Pioneer Square at his own expense.
For many years, the McGilvras remained the only permanent residents of today’s Madison Park neighborhood even after Judge McGilvra platted two large tracts of his property south of Madison Street in the mid-1870s. In 1889, Judge McGilvra platted a third addition in the Madison Park area, mostly to the immediate south of Madison Street. At the same time, Judge McGilvra retained ownership of a large tract of land north of Madison Street and divided it into individual lots as well. However, with these lots, Judge McGilvra stipulated that only cottages could be built and solely on a leasehold basis. After constructing their dwellings, owners would be required to make annual payments for the use of the lots. Despite these limitations, many chose to build cottages on the small lots, which remained in the ownership of the McGilvra Estate until the land was eventually platted as the Loch-Gilvra Addition in 1919 and made available for sale. Access to the area improved with the construction of the cable railway in the late 1880s, which spurred residential development. As a further enticement to development, Judge McGilvra set aside more than twenty acres of land for public use, which was eventually developed into Madison Park by 1890.
At that time, streetcar lines often terminated at a popular attraction so as to encourage real estate development along the length of the line and to increase ridership outside of regular commuting hours, especially on weekends. Ten years later, the Seattle Electric Company, a predecessor company of Puget Sound Traction, Light & Power Company, consolidated under unified operation the properties of virtually all of the city’s private street railway businesses, including the Madison Park Cable Railway Company. Bisected by Madison Street, Madison Park featured a large pavilion, a boathouse, piers, a promenade, and two floating bandstands with shoreline seating. Nearby, a crude baseball diamond was built on the north side of Madison Street, which hosted the first professional baseball game in Seattle on May 24, 1890. With cable cars running from Pioneer Square as often as every two minutes on Sundays, the park soon became the most popular beach in the city. Steamships plied the lake from the park’s piers, carrying passengers for transportation as well as pleasure excursions and cruises. In 1908, ferry service to Kirkland was inaugurated from the dock at the foot of Madison Street, allowing automobiles to be transported across the lake for the first time. This remained one of the primary means of crossing the lake until the completion of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge in 1940 forced an end to the ferry service by 1943.
In 1903, the city hired the Olmsted Brothers landscape firm to prepare plans for a comprehensive park and boulevard system. In 1908, the Olmsted Brothers supplemented their original plan with an additional report, which included the large areas annexed by the city the previous year. In their reports, the Olmsted Brothers recommended the acquisition of several private amusement parks in the city. However, Madison Park was not included, possibly because it was considered to have minimal park-like qualities, especially with the presence of the transportation facilities. During the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909, many visitors to the city also enjoyed the amenities at Madison Park. Over the next several years, however, the park’s popularity waned, as new recreational opportunities became available. In 1916, the water level of Lake Washington dropped nine feet due to the construction of the Ship Canal, and a new, extended shoreline appeared. The lower lake level also stranded the remaining waterfront facilities on dry land, requiring their removal. Three years later in 1919, the Seattle Municipal Railway built a small wood frame bathhouse at Madison Park and improved the beach area. The same year, the city had completed its acquisition of the privately owned streetcar lines of the Puget Sound Traction, Light & Power Company, as well as all of their related assets within the city, including Madison Park. The bathing beach soon became a popular attraction despite the proximity of the ferry line. In 1922, the park property was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Parks Department, which could better maintain the site. The Parks Department remodeled the bathhouse in 1929, but deemed it unsanitary and inadequate less the ten years later. Due to the city’s financial difficulties during the Depression, the remodeling of the Madison Park Bathhouse became a project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) between 1937 and 1938.
Created in 1935, the WPA consolidated and superseded several earlier programs, including the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), both of which were established in 1933. In its first six years of existence, the WPA allocated 78% of available funds for projects involved with public works, construction and conservation of natural resources. The remaining 22% of the funds were used for a wide range of community services, including education, recreation and the arts. At Madison Park, the WPA transformed the inadequate bathhouse and added locker and bag storage space necessary to take care of the large crowds using the beach. The WPA also built the concrete beach steps along the shoreline and constructed tennis courts on park property across the street. Built with Colonial Revival stylistic features, the Madison Park Bathhouse is the only surviving example of the city’s early wood frame bathhouses. All other early wood frame bathhouses were later replaced with more permanent masonry buildings, including those at Green Lake, Madrona and Seward Parks. In the mid-1980s, the bathhouse was remodeled once again to serve as a more flexible community center facility. The bathhouse is significant for its design and for its associations with the Works Progress Administration and with the development of Madison Park and the surrounding neighborhood.
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| Appearance |
| Completed in 1938, this wood frame bathhouse occupies a site along the Lake Washington shoreline near the northern end of Madison Park. Set into a gently sloping hillside, the one-story structure has a lower level, which faces the lake at the rear. A large function room occupies most of the main floor level, which also contains restrooms at the northwest and southwest corners. Larger restrooms with showers and dressing room areas are located on the lower beach level of the building within the northeast and southeast corners of the building. A lifeguard office is housed in the space between the two lower restrooms. The women’s restrooms are located in the southern corners of the building, while the men’s restrooms are located in the northern corners. Along the north and south elevations of the building, concrete stairs lead down from the street level to the beach. Before the WPA substantially enlarged the bathhouse in the later 1930s, the original 1919 building had a rectangular plan with a hip roof and rested on a high concrete foundation. Situated near the street, this modest Vernacular structure faced onto a wide grassy beach, which sloped right to the water’s edge. Prior to the work on the bathhouse, the WPA first constructed concrete beach steps along the shoreline. Subsequently, the WPA built a large addition along the east elevation of the bathhouse and reconfigured the roof, which significantly altered the appearance of the original structure. As a result, the bathhouse now has a side gable roof and a saltbox form with a longer eastern roof slope. The mostly rectangular footprint measures 60 feet by 45 feet. Colonial Revival stylistic features embellish the building’s exterior, including clapboard siding and large Palladian-style windows on the north and south elevations.
On the west elevation facing the street, a shed roof dormer extends across the center of the roof above the center entrance doors. The dormer contains the three original multi-paned sash separated by wide wood mullions. However, the ground floor level has been been altered significantly. A 1950 historic photograph shows three large double-hung windows at the center flanked by two smaller ones. There does not appear to be any entrances to the building on this elevation. Subsequent alterations extended the roof one foot over the center portion and added double entrance doors at the center between three small windows arranged in an L-pattern on each side. Crown moldings cap the wide door opening and line the upper margins of the thick window surrounds. At the ends of the elevation, single entrance doors have been added in order to access the restrooms within the northwest and southwest corners of the building. The north elevation remains largely intact with the prominent multi-paned Palladian window configuration centered below the roof peak at the main floor level. Unlike most windows of this type, the larger center window has a flat rather than an arched head capped by a crown molding. Small brackets support the frieze over this center window. East of the center window, a smaller multi-paned window is also situated at the main floor level. The western and eastern ends of the elevation have louvered window openings into the two men’s restrooms at the upper and lower levels. These openings originally featured multi-paned sash. At the center of the basement level, a small concrete wing attached to the foundation has an entrance on the eastern side. An adjacent window opening within the foundation of the building has been filled with concrete block.
The south elevation presents the same configuration of window openings at the main floor and lower levels, which exhibit the same type of alterations. However, a single entrance door capped with a crown molding has been installed on the main floor level between the three windows grouped at the center and the single window to the east. The concrete wing attached at the basement level has double doors. The east elevation facing the lake is also largely intact with the restroom blocks at either end flanking the slightly recessed lifeguard office at the center. The gable roof extends over the restroom blocks with a U-shape but terminates above the flat roof over the office. This design allows for a band of multi-paned windows along the east elevation of the upper floor. The restroom blocks feature the original sliding doors over the entrances at the outer edges of the building. The original multi-paned sash have been replaced with louvers in the window openings at the inner edges. The original sliding doors at the center of the office block have been replaced with regular double doors. The window openings framing the center entrance doors remain intact, however a long louver has replaced the original multi-paned sash above the wide door opening. Stairs and ramps along the east elevation provide access to the restrooms and lifeguard office. This building is well maintained and retains very good physical integrity with few substantial alterations. |
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