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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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Built in 1910, the residence was purchased by A. T. and Ethel E. Williamson in April of 1920. They remained through 1943. John R. and Marjorie Ward lived in the house by 1955 through 1961. In August of 1963, John S. Brace bought the building for $14,500 and remained through 1965. Norman L. Shodene purchased the building in January of 1966 for $15,500 and remained through 1968.
Charles P. Dose and his son, architect Charles C. Dose, platted the Dose Addition in 1906 on ten acres along South Walker Street between Thirth-First Avenue South and Lake Washington. Charles P. Dose was a German immigrant and a real estate businessman and banker originally based in Chicago. In 1871, Mr. Dose and his partners, Fricke Brothers, purchased a 40-acre tract of property in Seattle’s future Mount Baker District on Lake Washington. In 1898, he moved from Chicago to Seattle with his family.
Charles C. Dose designed houses in the subdivision. The Dose family lived in one, and then sold it and built another. The Dose’s first house in the plat was a cottage at Thirty-First Avenue South and South Walker Street.
The Dose Addition had the same restrictions on non-white ownership as Mount Baker Park. The Dose family, especially Mrs. Charles C. (Phoebe) Dose, was actively involved in the creation of the Mount Baker Park Improvement Club.
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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