| Historic Name: |
Rhodes, Albert J., House |
Common Name: |
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| Style: |
None |
Neighborhood: |
Capitol Hill |
| Built By: |
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Year Built: |
1914-15 |
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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 unusual and prominent house is notable for its original owner, its prominent site, its architect, and its Renaissance Revival style with terra cotta cladding, both unusual in Seattle residences. The house has been determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. It was designed in 1914-15 by architect A. Warren Gould for Albert and Harriet Rhodes, a prominent department store owner. Rhodes was born in Wisconsin in 1864 and first worked in the grocery business in North Dakota, Wisconsin and Minnesota before moving to Tacoma in 1889. He worked as a store clerk and then as a traveling crockery salesman until establishing his own tea store in 1892. His three brothers, Henry, William and Charles, joined him in the business that evolved into Rhodes Brothers, Tacoma’s largest department store. In 1907, Albert left to establish another department store in Seattle, the Rhodes Company. This became one of the premiere local department stores of the era, with a large store on Second Avenue, the main retail street. At the time of his sudden death in 1921, Albert Rhodes was one of the city’s most prominent businessmen. His wife, Harriet, continued to run the company into the early 1940s.
Augustus Warren Gould was born in Nova Scotia in 1872, and was educated there and in Massachusetts. He began in business as a contractor but, in the 1890s, moved into the architectural field in Boston, where he designed a number of major institutional buildings, private clubs and residences. In 1903, he moved to Seattle, where he participated in business activities and quickly gained several prominent commissions. His familiarity with East Coast building techniques and steel-framed, terra cotta-clad buildings, served him well. In 1909-1912 he was in partnership with Édouard Frère Champney. He is best known for his design of the Arctic Building (with George Lawton, 1913-17), ornamented with terra cotta walruses. A second impressive residence, done before the Rhodes residence, was the Queen Anne home of S. J. Stillwell (1909-1910).
From 1954 to 1958 the house was owned by Alex Peabody, president of the Puget Sound Navigation Cpmapny, which had been a major owner of the "mosquito fleet" boats serving the Puget Sound area. In 1958 Cecil and Corinne Callison bought the house; Callison was president of Callison's Inc., a wholesale evergreens company.
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| Appearance |
| This large residence is prominently sited on a spectacular site above Lake Union, on the west side of Capitol Hill. It resembles a classical Italian villa, set within a formal garden on a raised terrace surrounded by a terra cotta balustrade and a massive granite retaining wall. A dense hedge makes it somewhat difficult to see. The two-story house has a hipped roof with wide eaves lined with a deep modillioned cornice above a wide frieze. It is L-shaped in plan, with a single-story sun porch on the west an ell extending from the rear (north) elevation. The main elevation, on the south, has a center recessed entrance flanked by Ionic pilasters that support a full entablature. The casement windows appear to retain their original wood sash. First-story windows have slightly recessed blind segmental arches filled by a decorative medallion and capped with an elaborate keystone. The flat-headed windows on the second story each have a window box set into the stringcourse that separates the two stories. |
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| Status: |
Yes - Inventory |
| Classication: |
Building |
District Status: |
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| Cladding(s): |
Terra cotta |
Foundation(s): |
Concrete - Poured |
| Roof Type(s): |
Hip |
Roof Material(s): |
Clay Tile |
| Building Type: |
Domestic - Single Family |
Plan: |
L-Shape |
| Structural System: |
Unknown |
No. of Stories: |
two |
| Unit Theme(s): |
Architecture/Landscape Architecture, Commerce |
| Integrity |
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Changes to Windows: |
Intact |
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Changes to Original Cladding: |
Intact |
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Changes to Plan: |
Intact |
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| Major Bibliographic References |
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Woodbridge, Sally and Roger Montgomery. A Guide to Architecture in Washington State. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980.
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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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Hanford, C. H. Seattle and Environs. Chicago: Pioneer Historical Publication Company, 1924.
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