Seattle Historical Sites

Summary for 1516 E Republican ST E / Parcel ID 8731770000 / Inv #

Historic Name: Twin Gables Common Name: Twin Gables Style: Tudor Neighborhood: Capitol Hill Built By: Year Built: 1929   Significance In the opinion of the survey, this property appears to meet the criteria of the National Register of Historic Places. In the opinion of the survey, this property appears to meet the criteria of the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. In the opinion of the survey, this property is located in a potential historic districe (National and/or local). Twin Gables was built in 1929, one of three buildings developed by the Borchert Company, the Portland firm owned by Mark Borchert, Frederick Anhalt's friend and brother-in-law. The building aimed at the luxury market, originally having only 14 apartments, including two with seven rooms and eight with five rooms. Later, two one-bedroom units were formed from other units or storage areas, and it now has 16 condominiums. Anhalt was Seattle's most prominent apartment developer, bringing a distinctive sense of style and promoting high-quality apartments as an alternative to single-family homes. His buildings are the best known of the city's numerous pre-war multifamily buildings, and set the standard for such projects. Anhalt combined the development, design, construction, landscaping, marketing and management functions in one firm. He moved to Seattle about 1924 after working in various trades in the Midwest, and in 1924 formed the Western Building & Leasing Company with partner Jerome B. Hardcastle, Jr. The company quickly began to centralize design and construction with the firm, and in 1928 Anhalt bought Hardcastle's interest. The firm built bungalow courts, apartment courts and commercial buildings on Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, West Seattle, Beacon Hill and Ballard, usually drawing from English Tudor or Mediterranean Revival precedents. In late 1928, the firm (now known as the Anhalt Company) built five larger-scale luxury apartment buildings on Capitol Hill, based on Medieval English and Norman French prototypes. Although the apartment business failed during the depression, Anhalt continued to building single-family homes until 1942, when he turned to his nursery business. Edwin E. Dofsen, the designer, had been a draftsman for Seattle architects Arthur Loveless and William J. Bain before joining Anhalt in 1927. He designed fourteen of Anhalt's apartment buildings, as well as projects for other developers. He later went on to design more than forty residences in the Seattle area. His father, John Dofsen, was Anhalt's primary landscape gardener, and designed the Twin Gables courtyard. After completion, the building was owned and managed by the Anhalt Company until its bankruptcy in the Depression. In 1936 the owner was listed as the Acacia Mutual Life Insurance Company. It later had several owners, and is now condominiums.   Appearance Twin Gables has a U-shaped plan, with 19,544 square feet on three floors around a landscaped courtyard. It is of wood frame construction, clad primarily in clinker brick with yellow clapboard accents. A distinctive element on the main façade is the cross-hatched brick pattern with grooved bricks broken in held and laid in a hatched pattern. The windows are predominantly leaded casement windows, 24 inches wide, in four- and six-light configurations, place in groups of two or three. The steeply-pitched complex roofline is composed of hipped roof forms with inset gables and a variety of hipped, gabled and shed dormers of various sizes. Four entrances open into the courtyard. Two are at the interior corners, each capped by a prominent clapboard-covered gable with wide, double-height leaded glass windows. At each side is a hipped dormer, supported by heavy curved brackets, with a small wood balcony and other wide hipped dormer with three windows, Two large two-story bays form the front of the building, near the street, the one on the left is gabled, with a diamond-paned oriel windows on the courtyard and a balcony with /French doors facing rhe street. On the right is a hip-roofed section with French doors opening onto a small balcony, with casement windows and a small hipped dormer toward the street. On the west elevation, facing a parking lot, are three rear doors flanked by six-light leaded casement windows. Toward the rear, next to the intersecting gable of the main volume, is large third-story shed-roofed dormer, clad in clapboard. The roofline on the east elevation is generally similar to the west side, except that one of the dormer has French doors and a balcony, There is small entry area with two rear doors, and two other doors nearby. At the north, or rear, elevation wooden staircases at each end ascent to the second floor, In the center are two wood balconies with doors and metal fire escapes reaching to the third floor, two shed dormers are in the center of the roof, flanked at each end by three gabled dormers with pairs of diamond-paned casement windows. The courtyard has several trees, numerous shrubs and a small pond surrounded by a low box hedge and featuring a small island with a pine tree. The courtyard has a low brick wall and a wrought iron gate, added at a later date.

Detail for 1516 E Republican ST E / Parcel ID 8731770000 / Inv #

Status: Yes - Inventory Classication: Building District Status: Cladding(s): Brick - Clinker, Wood - Clapboard Foundation(s): Concrete - Poured Roof Type(s): Gable, Hip Roof Material(s): Asphalt/Composition Building Type: Domestic - Multiple Family Plan: Structural System: No. of Stories: Unit Theme(s): Architecture/Landscape Architecture Integrity Changes to Windows: Intact Changes to Plan: Intact Changes to Original Cladding: Intact Major Bibliographic References Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects. Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994. King County Tax Assessor Records, ca. 1932-1972. Kreisman, Lawrence. Made to Last, Historic Preservation in Seattle. Historic Preservation Foundation and University of Washington Press, 1999. City of Seattle, Department of Planning and Development, Microfilm Records. Lambert, Steve. Built by Anhalt. Harstine House, 1982.

Photo collection for 1516 E Republican ST E / Parcel ID 8731770000 / Inv #

Photo taken Mar 31, 2006 Photo taken Mar 31, 2006