| 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: |
1922 |
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| Significance |
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Built in 1922, this building was constructed after the property was purchased by Miss Amelia Helen Bachmann in December of 1920. The Seattle architectural firm, Wohleb & Stirney, designed the residence. The building cost an estimated $4,500. Miss Bachmann moved to the residence from 133 Liberty Ct. By 1934, she was teaching at West Seattle High School and shared the residence with Mary P. Bachmann, widow, and her sister Rose (Rosemary) M. Bachmann, student. By 1939, Walter Maske, married to Rosemary, also shared the residence. Miss Amelia Bachmann was born in Seattle to Mr. and Mrs. August B. Bachmann and graduated from Broadway High School and the University of Washington. Miss Bachmann’s educational career consisted of approximately eight years teaching primary classes prior to teaching at West Seattle High School. In the late 1950s, she also taught physical education classes. Miss Bachmann retired in October of 1958 after becoming ill. Miss Amelia Bachmann died on October 13, 1958. She was a member of the Territorial Daughters of Washington, the National Education Association and the National Retired Teacher’s Association. She is survived by her sisters, Mrs. William Hellenthal and Mrs. William Maske, and a niece, Mrs. Jorge Corrales-Diaz living in Long Beach, CA. In April of 1962, Lynn Baied purchased the residence for $16,000. Shortly thereafter, John Colbert purchased the residence in April of 1967 for $18,000.
Joseph H. Wohleb (1887-1958) was a prominent Olympia architect who had an office in Seattle, Wohleb & Stanley, in 1922. Wohleb was born in Connecticut and moved to Olympia in 1911. Wohleb is best known for his designs of public buildings in Olympia. This impressive list includes the Thurston County Courthouse (1930) and the Transportation and Public Lands - Social Security Buildings for the State Capitol campus. Among his other designs are Olympia High School and many other school buildings, the Mason County Courthouse, Capitol Theatre in Olympia, brewery buildings in Olympia and Seattle, and the C.J. Lord and Henry McCleary houses in Olympia. Wohleb’s son joined the practice in 1946, and the firm became known as Wohleb & Wohleb & Associates starting in 1955.
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 1922 this Arts & Crafts single-family cottage stands on a rectangular lot. The lot’s north end curves to follow the contour of Mount Baker Boulevard South. The building is elevated approximately 3’ above Mount Baker Boulevard South. Set back from and oriented towards Mount Baker Boulevard the site features a modest front yard with a larger private back yard. This 1322 square foot one-and-a-half story house with a three-quarter daylight basement features a rectangular plan, measuring 30’ by 47’, with two 7’ by 12’ and 3’ by 6’ porches. A poured concrete foundation supports the wood frame clapboard clad superstructure. Asphalt composition roofing covers the clipped side gabled roof and eyebrow dormers. Abrupt eaves and rake overhangs with eave returns and prominent front cornice define the roofline. Multiple lite double hung wood sash windows provide day lighting for the first and half story living spaces. All windows feature painted wood trim. A prominent stuccoed brick chimney, placed on the primary facade directly between the two main window groupings, services the building. Gutters with downspouts provide drainage. The original concrete pathway and flight of stairs leads to the main entrance. Classically influenced columns support a trellis, having decoratively cut rafters, off the building’s east side. |
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| Status: |
Yes - Inventory |
| Classication: |
Building |
District Status: |
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| Cladding(s): |
Wood - Clapboard |
Foundation(s): |
Concrete - Poured |
| Roof Type(s): |
Gable - Clipped |
Roof Material(s): |
Asphalt/Composition |
| Building Type: |
Domestic - Single Family |
Plan: |
Rectangular |
| 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 Original Cladding: |
Slight |
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Changes to Plan: |
Slight |
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Changes to Windows: |
Moderate |
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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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Architects Reference Files, Special Collections and Preservation Division, University of Washington Libraries.
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Dietz, Duane, “Architects and Landscape Architects of Seattle, 1876 to 1959 and Beyond,” unpublished paper. University of Washington Libraries, July 1993.
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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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"Joseph Wohleb: resident architect of the State's Capitol," by Dawn Maddox, Landmarks, vol. IV, no. 4.
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