| Historic Name: |
Grinstein Residence |
Common Name: |
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| Style: |
American Foursquare |
Neighborhood: |
Capitol Hill |
| Built By: |
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Year Built: |
1905 |
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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 house was designed in 1905 (permit #35176) by local architect Frank H. Perkins, apparently for Paul Fechtner. Fechtner, listed in early city directories as a machinist, may have built the house for himself, or may have built it on speculation for someone else; he does not appear to have lived here very long. The house has had a variety of working- and middle-class owners through its history, including a carpenter, a sheet metal worker, a nurse and a city engineer. The current family has owned it since the 1980s.
This is an excellent example of an American Foursquare, a popular house form in the first two decades of the 20th century. Capitol Hill has the city’s greatest concentration of American Foursquares--often called the Classic Box or Seattle Box, because of its local popularity. They were built primarily between 1905 and 1910. This house is unusual in having been designed by an architect, as most examples were built by local builders from patterns purchased from magazines. There are typically eight main rooms on two floors--living room, hall, dining room and kitchen downstairs and four bedrooms upstairs. Two reasons for the popularity of the form were that it provided a large amount of space for reasonable cost, and that it could easily be personalized for varying tastes and budgets. This is one of the more elaborate examples, with leaded glass windows.
Frank Perkins practiced architecture in Seattle from 1903 through 1923. He came to settle from southern California, where he had designed buildings for Senator W. A. Clark. Some of his Seattle work is in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, reflecting his California background. He designed many commercial buildings, apartments and houses in Seattle, including Forest Ridge Convent and School on Capitol Hill (a Seattle landmark), hotels in the International District and the Denny Regrade and apartment buildings on Capitol Hill and Queen Anne.
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| Appearance |
| This Classic Box or Foursquare has the typical hipped-roof form with a slightly flared roof with deep bracketed eaves and a hipped dormer on the front. Cladding is clapboard with a wide belt course above the first floor windows. The recessed porch is on the north side of the main (west) façade. Two pairs of square wood columns support the flat bracketed porch roof, which projects several feet from the façade. Most of the windows have leaded glass in the upper sections. To the south of the entry is a three-part window; above this is a curved hanging bay with three windows. Above the entry is a group of four elaborate leaded windows, set above a row of carved brackets. The south elevation has a hipped roof bay with a group of five narrow windows. |
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