Name (common, present, or historic): Great Western Motors Building
Year Built: 1920
Street and Number: 1158 Broadway (aka 905 E. Union)
Assessor's File No. 1978201295
Legal Description: See attached
Plat Name: AA Denny’s Broadway Addition Block: 141 Lot: 1-2
Present Owner: The Polyclinic Present Use: Storage
Address: 1145 Broadway, Seattle WA 98122 (Primary Contact for owner: Chris Rossman, UrbanEvolution LLC, 999 N. Northlake Way, Suite 306, Seattle WA 98103)
Original Owner: Edward F. Sweeney
Original Use: Automotive sales and service
Architect: Victor W. Voorhees
Builder: Unknown
Great Western Motors Building
Seattle Landmark Nomination
July 24, 2013
This report was prepared by:
Nicholson Kovalchick Architects 310 First Avenue S., Suite 4-S Seattle WA 98104 206-933-1150 www.nkarch.com
Great Western Motors Building Seattle Landmark Nomination
INDEX
I. Introduction 3
II. Building information 4
III. Architectural description 5
A. Site and adjacent neighborhood context B. Building exterior and structure C. Building interior D. Summary of primary alterations
IV. Historical context 9
A. Early site development B. The development of the Pike-Pine “Auto Row” in Seattle C. Building owners and occupants D. Paige automobiles E. The architect, Victor W. Voorhees F. The engineer, Henry W. Bittman
V. Bibliography and sources 25
VI. Preparer and Reviewer information 27
VII. Report illustrations A. Current maps, context, and images of the building 28 B. Historic maps, context, and images of the building 36 C. Other work by the architect, Victor W. Voorhees 52 D. Other work by the engineer, Henry W. Bittman 60
Appendix A: Graphic summary of primary alterations to elevations 62
Site plan, selected architectural images Following
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I. INTRODUCTION
This report was written at the request of the developers of the property, The Wolff Company and Urban Evolution LLC, with the permission of the owners, The Polyclinic, as part of the Seattle land-use permit and SEPA process to ascertain the historical nature of the subject building.
Sources used in this report include: • Records of permits and original drawings from the Seattle Department of Planning and Development microfilm library, as well as Tract Book images on microfilm which indicate chain of ownership of the property. • Assessor's photographs and property card from the Puget Sound Regional Archives in Bellevue, Washington. • Newspaper, book, city directories, and maps referencing the property (see bibliography). • Author's on-site photographs and building inspection, or by other NKA employees. • Information on owners and residents was derived from the sources above; a title search was not conducted on the property. • Historic photographs of the subject property provided an important source of information regarding changes to the exterior to the building.
Unless noted otherwise, all images are by NK Architects and date from the first quarter of 2013.
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II. BUILDING INFORMATION
Name (recent): Complete Automotive
Name (original): Great Western Motors Building
Year Built: 1920
Street & Number: 1158 Broadway (aka 905 E. Union)
Assessor’s File No.: 1978201295
Original Owner: Edward F. Sweeney
Primary Contact: Chris Rossman (Developer, and Owner’s representative) Urban Evolution LLC 999 N. Northlake Way, Suite 306 Seattle WA 98103 206-595-0983 [email protected]
Present Owner: The Polyclinic 1145 Broadway Seattle, WA 98122 Contact: Randal Brand, Director of Facilities and Support Services 206-860-4416
Present Use: Storage
Original Use: Automobile sales and service
Original Architect/Builder: Victor W. Voorhees
Original Engineer: Henry W. Bittman
Plat/Block/Lot: AA Denny’s Broadway Addition / Block 141 / Lots 1-2
Legal Description: Lots 1 and 2, Block 141, A.A. Denny’s Broadway Addition to the City of Seattle, According to the Plat thereof recorded in volume 6 of plats, page 40, in King County, Washington, Except that portion of said lot 1 heretofore condemned in King County Superior Court cause number 61476 for widening of East Union street as provided by ordinance no. 17972 of the City of Seattle:. Together with West 7 feet of old 10th Avenue (now Broadway Court) adjacent to said premises on the East vacated by Ordinance Number 26803 on which is attached thereto by operation of law.
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III. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION
A. Site and adjacent neighborhood context
The subject site is located at the south end of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, at the point where the adjacent First Hill and Squire Park neighborhoods meet in a saddle between low hills. Some sources, such as the 1975 Steinbrueck / Nyberg neighborhood inventory, place this property in the First Hill neighborhood. [See context photos pp. 28-29]
The site is located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Broadway Avenue and E. Union Street. The property is on a rectangular lot approximately 159 feet east to west and 100 feet north to south, and the building occupies the entire lot. The site slopes gently downward from south to north.
Across E. Union Street to the north is the former Johnson and Hamilton Mortuary, which is now a local office for Gilda’s Club Seattle (a foundation and space devoted to supporting those living with cancer). To the east, across an alley-like right of way called Broadway Court, there are two low-rise buildings housing automotive detailing and storage businesses. The south side of the property is a shared party wall with a 1928 building that was renovated in recent decades into an upscale bowling alley and pool hall. The other buildings on the block consist of a parking garage and the Silver Cloud hotel at the junction of Madison and Broadway.
The site is located in NC3-65 zone and within the Pike/Pine Urban Center Village, and adjacent to the 12th Avenue Urban Center Village to the south, and the First Hill Urban Center Village Overlay west of the site. Zoning heights vary considerably nearby, from a maximum 65 feet to a maximum of 160 feet within a few blocks. The site is also located within Pike/Pine Conservation Overlay District and the Conservation Core within this district.
The immediate neighborhood is primarily a dense mix of commercial, mixed-use, institutional and civic buildings, with few single-family houses nearby (the nearest areas characterized by single-family homes are primarily northeast of Pine Street and 12th Avenue, or southeast of 13th Avenue and Union). While the neighborhood has been continuously developed every decade from the 1880s to the present, the area was heavily developed in the decades between 1900- 1930. The immediate area derives considerable character from automobile-related service buildings and showrooms built between about 1910 and 1925. The Pike-Pine Corridor just northwest and northeast of the site is notable throughout the city for a vibrant urban living, working, dining, and entertainment environment, particularly in recent decades.
The largest institutional presence in the immediate area are Seattle University, Seattle Central Community College, and Swedish Hospital. The Polyclinic medical center is located across Broadway from the site, and is the owner of the subject property.
Seattle historic landmarks within a six block radius include: • Old Fire Station #25 (Somervell & Cote, 1909), at E. Union Street and Harvard Avenue • Seattle First Baptist Church (Ulysses G. Fay, 1911), at Seneca Street and Harvard Avenue • Broadway Performance Hall (Edgar Blair, 1911), at Broadway and E. Pine Street • First African Methodist Episcopal Church (1912), at E. Pine Street & 14th Avenue • Cal Anderson Park, Lincoln Reservoir and Bobby Morris Playfield (Olmsted Brothers, 1901, altered), at 11th Avenue between E. Pine Street and Denny Way • St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral (1937), at about E. Olive Street & 13th Avenue • Coca-Cola Bottling Plant (Graham & Painter, 1939), at 14th Avenue and E. Columbia Street • Dearborn House (c. 1909), at 1117 Minor Avenue • Summit Grade School (1905), at 1415 Summit Avenue
Some notable nearby buildings that are not landmarks include: • Temple de Hirsch Sinai Synagogue (Detlie & Peck, with B. Marcus Priteca, 1959-60), at 15th Avenue and E. Pike • Chapel of St. Ignatius Loyola (Steven Holl, 1997), at 11th Avenue and E. Spring Street on the Seattle University campus • Garrand Building (John Parkinson, 1894, altered), at 10th Avenue and E. Marion Street on the Seattle University campus • Odd Fellows Temple (Carl Breitung, 1908-10), at 10th Avenue and E. Pine Street
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• Egyptian Theater (former Masonic Temple, by Saunders & Lawton, 1916), at Harvard Avenue and E. Pine Street.
A 1975 historic resources inventory of the First Hill neighborhood by Victor Steinbrueck and Folke Nyberg (part of their citywide inventory project) describes three categories of historic building significance: significant to the city, significant to the community, or of no significance. Their inventory called out the subject building as being of no significance, although the former Johnson and Hamilton Mortuary across the street to the north was noted by the survey as being significant to the city.1
B. Building Exterior and Structure
The building was constructed in 1920 as an automobile sales showroom and service building. Historically, the subject building was addressed as 905 E. Union or 1158 Broadway, but occupies a narrow block with three street frontages along E. Union, Broadway, and the small street Broadway Court. The building represents an example of masonry and heavy timber mill construction, with extensive storefront glazing, typical of “Auto Row” service buildings in the area. Today it is unoccupied and used for office equipment and furniture storage by the owner. [See exterior photos pp. 30-32, and 35]
The building is rectangular in plan, and divided into five approximately equal 20-foot structural bays on the east and west elevations, and eight on the north. Notations on the original drawings indicate that the building was originally designed with the automobile showroom and parts room along Union Street, wrapping the corners, and occupying the northernmost two bays of the building. The exterior and interior finishes of these two bays were generally higher quality and intended to appeal to customers—including terrazzo floors and beamed ceilings. The south or rear three bays were originally used for the service and repair of automobiles, and were (and remain) more utilitarian in character on the exterior and interior—including concrete floors and exposed structural elements.
The building is one story, measuring 18 feet 6 inches in height, and has a 9 foot partial basement measuring 40 x 35 feet in plan. The basement contains mechanical equipment only—originally the boiler—and was not investigated for this report. Tax records from 1937 describe the structure as concrete foundation (drawings indicate spread footings under the masonry piers), unreinforced 9” brick exterior walls with interior concrete piers supporting roof beams, a reinforced concrete party wall at the south property line, and 14 x 14 inch post and beam interior supports. The flat roof is constructed of “laminated” 2 x 6 inch boards on end, with exterior trusses over the south three bays which are visible from above. Interior finishes were described as soundproof plastered walls with fir trim, and plate glass storefronts with brick bulkheads.
The north, or primary, elevation faces Union Street. Although the north elevation is made up of eight structural bays, the expression of the bays on the north storefront has varied. Originally, the bay structure consisted of double-width bays at the center and ends separated by smaller bays (ABABA), but was altered in 1963 to consist of equal-width bays matching the smaller width (BBBBBBBB). This was accomplished by introducing apparently non-load-bearing wall piers to the elevation to subdivide the wider bays (see 1964 photo). At the same time, original windows below the transom were replaced with modern aluminum sash. Also at that time, the original transoms over the storefront windows appear to have simply been covered over, rather than removed, and are therefore today intact. By 2002, the c.1963 non-load-bearing wall piers had been truncated below the transom level, so that the original transoms were again visible on the exterior.
The transoms on the north elevation are wood sash, subdivided into narrow lights, with a single horizontal muntin defining the upper quarter of the transom. Transoms are subdivided by wide vertical muntins into thirds at narrow bays and fourths at wider bays.
The north facade originally featured two recessed main entrances, located within the “B” bays in the ABABA elevation configuration. One of these entrances remains today, at the eastern “B” bay. The glazed entry door is surrounded by a wood sash multi-pane relight and transom, and the ceiling of the recess features decorative battens and an overhead light fixture.
1 Nyberg and Steinbrueck, 1975, unpaginated.
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A brick parapet wraps around the three main elevations of the building, and features a single horizontal projecting course (which may be concrete or cast stone) approximately at the roofline. The parapet originally featured a triangular pediment-like form over the central two bays on the north elevation, but this was removed sometime between 1960 and 1964, as evidenced by photographs.
The west elevation, facing Broadway, is composed of five bays and two window types. The windows in the northernmost two bays wrap the corner from Union Street, and resemble the storefront and transoms on the north or primary facade—transoms are original, but storefront are modern aluminum sash. The southernmost three bays, however, appear to be the original wood sash windows lighting this service/repair half of the building. These windows are not a storefront system, but rather are composed of multiple lights, with prominent vertical muntins subdividing the windows. The horizontal muntin separating the transom and storefront system of the northernmost two bays is continued across in these southernmost three bays. The three windows of this section reduce in height, and the sill steps upward, as the sidewalk grade slopes uphill to the south.
The east elevation, facing the narrow Broadway Court, has been significantly altered, although no historic photos could be found of this facade. Currently, only the northernmost single bay is a continuation of the north elevation window system, and retains the original transom. Two garage entries and a short ramp down to the interior floor level provide access to the service half of the building. The remaining two bays are walled and sealed. Originally, this elevation was composed of one storefront bay, three multipane window bays (similar to the three southernmost windows on the west elevation), and a single garage entry with wooden Z-type doors shown in the drawings.
The south side of the building is a party wall, and not visible from the exterior.
Photographs indicate that at least by 1964, and perhaps several times in recent decades, the brick exterior walls have been painted. Early photographs indicate that the original condition of the brick was unpainted. The current condition suggests a skim coat under the paint, so that while the wall remains easily identifiable as a brick wall, the surface texture of the original brick has been compromised.
C. Building Interior
The northern portion of the building along Union Street was originally one large space along the storefront windows: an automobile showroom with mezzanine offices, and a parts department, intended for the public. Finishes indicated on original drawings include terrazzo floors and beamed ceilings. Original drawings and a 1920 newspaper photo of the showroom provide the only indication of the original interior. [See interior photos pp. 32-34]
Today, the building is used for storage by the owner. Terrazzo floors remain visible at the recessed entry porch on the north elevation; interior floors today are concrete. The beamed ceiling with decorative molding remains, although there are at least two locations where the structure has been compromised due to water damage and is being shored up. The present owners have constructed in recent years a nonstructural steel stud privacy wall inside the showroom area, set back from the storefront windows several feet, for security and to limit views into the building interior.
The office mezzanine remains against the south portion of what had been the sales/parts area. Alterations and an addition to the mezzanine may date from about 1963-67 by the architecture firm Ayer & Lamping, when the building was owned by the furniture company Prottas & Levitt. Original drawings show the mezzanine level considerably more glazed, wainscoting at the main level, and wood balustrades—none of which is there now, if it was ever built as designed. Presumably at that time, the mezzanine office was enlarged and extended northward toward the Union Street wall, which had the effect of increasing the separation in the interior from the northeast portion to the northwest portion of the space.
The southern half of the building—what had originally been the service and repair area—remains utilitarian in character. The post and beam structure is exposed and floors are concrete. The large open area is lit by windows at the east and west walls, and three skylights along the center of the ceiling. The garage door entries and a ramp at the eastern elevation provide access to the space; at the west elevation, along Broadway, the interior floor level is
Nicholson Kovalchick Architects – Great Western Motors Building Seattle Landmark Nomination – July 24, 2013 7 approximately two to three feet below the sidewalk level. Steps leading down to the basement are located at the southeast corner of the room.
D. Summary of Primary Alterations
Drawings on file at the Seattle Department of Planning and Development Microfilm Library indicate that the building was designed by Victor Voorhees and built in 1920. One structural sheet of the six-sheet architectural drawing set available is signed by Henry W. Bittman, who was apparently the consulting structural engineer (probably for steel used in the project). On the other five sheets, structural callouts are written out in Voorhees’ distinctive handwriting, suggesting that Voorhees may have done some of his own structural calculations for the building. On several architectural sheets, Voorhees includes the note “See structural plans for steel,” although the one Bittman sheet only includes the Boiler Room floor framing plan, and elevation details—therefore additional structural drawings, if they existed, are no longer extant.
Drawings are also on file showing non-significant alterations to the building in 1933 and 1935 by John Graham Sr., a prominent Seattle architect.
The well-known firm of Elizabeth Ayer & Rolland Lamping appear to have designed an alteration to the balcony mezzanine for the building showroom interior, sometime in the 1960s (drawings on file are undated and appear to be incomplete). The alteration of the storefront windows by introducing intermediary piers also occurred during the 1960s, so it is possible but unconfirmed that Ayer & Lamping may have had something to do with that design decision.
The most recent renovations, in 1991, were by The Kirkpatrick Architects, a Seattle firm located at 1109 First Avenue. These drawings do not, however, show the truncated window posts on the north elevation; this alteration appears to have occurred after 1991, but at least by 2002 (as evidenced by photos).
Known, permitted alterations to the building are as follows: [See graphic summary of alterations p. 62]
1923 Build 1935 Alter (partitions) 1943 [No description] 1947 Office partitions 1955 Erect sign ($1800) 1963 Remove interior non-bearing partitions and replace existing wood sash windows with aluminum ($5000) 1965 Construct partitions and establish occupancy as Stores ($300) 1965 Alter partition between wholesale and store ($500) 1965 Remove window and install two doors ($500) 1966 Erect retractable awning 1978 To construct a new balcony addition and existing store and warehouse building and occupy as mezzanine floor office computer room per plan. 1978 To install window wall to portion of existing balcony, per plans 1991 Change use of warehouse, showroom to auto retail sales and vehicle repair minor, per plans
Observed or apparent alterations to the building, based on current inspection of the building, original drawings, and historical photographs, include the following:
• Loss of the triangular shaped parapet at north elevation • Removal of the original windows and storefront configuration below the transom level at north elevation, and parts of east and west elevations • Removal of an original entry at north elevation • Exterior brick painted, with skim coat • Alterations and addition to office mezzanine at interior
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IV. HISTORICAL CONTEXT
A. Early site development
The subject site is located at the south end of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, at the point where the adjacent First Hill and Squire Park neighborhoods meet in a saddle between low hills. Both Capitol Hill and First Hill are two of the oldest neighborhoods in the city (Seattle’s founders had settled on Elliott Bay only in 1852, and incorporated in 1869). By about 1880-1900, both were established as fashionable neighborhoods for the growing elite in the expanding city, with numerous mansions crowning their slopes. Both neighborhoods were convenient to downtown, enjoyed water views and fresh air, and were some of the earliest areas served by streetcar lines. A map of 1896 street railways shows two lines serving First Hill via Yesler Way and James Street, while several lines were serving Capitol Hill via Pike, Union, Howell, Stewart, and other streets. On the interior of the hills and on lower slopes, such as around the subject property, more modest middle-class homes and small apartment buildings were built, with scattered commercial buildings, creating a relatively dense neighborhood by the early 1900s. [See historic context maps pp. 36-38]
Between these neighborhoods, a block south of the subject property, Madison Street sliced at a southwest to northeast angle from downtown over the hills to Lake Washington. The street had been extended and improved in 1864-65 at the personal expense of Judge John J. McGilvra (1827-1903), who owned 420 acres and a residence at what is now the Madison Park neighborhood. He developed a shoreline park for public use, and built in 1889-1891 a cable car along Madison Street to facilitate easier access for the public. This was one of the earliest streetcar lines in the city, and helped develop Madison Street into a major thoroughfare in later years.2
The 1893 Sanborn fire insurance map shows one wood frame house and a smaller outbuilding located at the northernmost corner of the subject site. At that time, the site consisted of two parcels at the north end of a long, narrow block. The surrounding street names were Broadway, Cooper Street (later renamed E. Union), and Williamson Street (later renamed Broadway Court), with Madison Street defining the south end of the block. The area was lightly developed, characterized by single-family frame houses developed singly or in groups, primarily along Madison Street. Improved and unimproved streets and rights of way in the area at that time lacked a clear organization, apparently due to the intersection of several major plats.
The 1904-05 Sanborn map shows considerably more development within about a decade. By this time, the subject site has been redivided into three parcels, with those facing Broadway occupied by single family residences or boarding houses (as evidenced by classified advertisements in the Seattle Times between 1900 and 1908). Permit records indicate that the two houses on the subject site were constructed in 1901 and 1902, were two stories with basement, frame construction, and both measured approximately 22 feet by 36 feet.
Even by 1905, development in the immediate area appears to have attracted a more refined class of residences and institutions on the west side of Broadway, or on either side of Madison Street, rather than the blocks due east of the subject site, which bottomed out into a low depression. Nearby significant properties at that time included: [See historic context photos pp. 44-50] • Prominent First Hill mansions a few blocks away, including the c. 1880s Burke family home located at the corner of Madison and Boylston (demolished). • St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, forerunner of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral (later to be located at 1245 10th Avenue E.), was located at Seneca and Harvard, having been constructed in 1897 (demolished).3 • The Jesuit building housing the Parish and School of the Immaculate Conception (John Parkinson, 1894), now the Garrand Building at Seattle University, remains extant on the south side of Madison at Broadway. This imposing four-story building was constructed of brick and stone, and was the start of what was to become today’s Seattle University. 4
2 “Seattle Neighborhoods: Madison Park – Thumbnail History,” HistoryLink.com Essay #2808, by Junius Rochester, November 16, 2000; Veka, pp.14-19. Horse-drawn streetcars had been introduced in Seattle in 1884, cable cars in 1887, and electric streetcars in 1889. By 1892, Seattle had 48 miles of streetcar lines and 22 miles of cable car lines. 3 “The history of St. Mark’s” St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle, at www.saintmarks.org/About/History.php. 4 “Jesuits purchase future Seattle University campus on November 6, 1890,” HistoryLink.org Essay 3264, by staff, May 9, 2001.
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• The Broadway Building, a mixed-use building on the north side of Madison at Broadway, was constructed in 1905 (demolished).
Within a few years, other significant buildings would be constructed nearby, including: • Fire House No. 25, located at Harvard and Union (Somervell & Cote, 1909) was Seattle’s first brick fire house, and remains in place today as condominiums. • The Scottish Rite Cathedral, on the triangular parcel of land at Broadway and Harvard Avenue, would be constructed shortly after 1912. The building was demolished at some point after 1975. • First Baptist Church, across Harvard Avenue from St. Marks Church and the Scottish Rite Cathedral, would be constructed in 1910 and completed in 1912. The building remains intact today. • Minor Hospital at Harvard and Spring, built in 1910. The building remains today, having been purchased in 1929 by First Baptist Church, which is located on the same block.
On the subject site’s block, the southern half in the early 1900s was dominated by the Academy of the Holy Name, a girl’s school operated by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. The substantial, three-story brick building appears to have been constructed around 1900 and may have been related to the Jesuit college across Madison Street from it, or more likely was a branch of the downtown Academy of Holy Names, was located at Jackson and 7th Avenue. In the early 1900s, the school offered “Primary, Intermediate, Grammar Grades, and four years of Academic Work, French, Latin, German, and Needlework taught without extra charge. The Music and Business Courses are special departments, the latter including Stenography, Typewriting, Bookkeeping, and Methods of Rapid Calculation.” 5 In later years, the building was known as St. Josephs or St. Rose’s Academy; after that, it was the home of the Ancient Order of Hibernians Club; then a boys home. By 1951, the building is shown on Sanborn maps as The Marne Hotel. The building was demolished at some point in later decades.
In contrast to these examples of relatively wealthy development on the higher ground to the west and south of the site, the area immediately east and north of the subject site in the early decades of the 1900s attracted smaller home and duplexes, and commercial uses such as liveries and wagon works. Examples of these more utilitarian buildings include: • The large Broadway Livery and Sale Stables, across Union Street from the subject site, at 10th Avenue, was constructed around 1900, and had expanded by 1912. Remnants of the buildings may have remained until demolished in recent years. • A Seattle Electric Car Barn was constructed in the early 1900s on the south side of Madison at 10th Avenue, as one of the sources of power for the streetcars along Madison. The building was remodeled in the mid-20th century but remains today as the Fine Arts Building on the Seattle University campus. • Bekins Moving & Storage began in Seattle at a downtown location but built a six story concrete warehouse, frame livery and other structures at 12th and Madison to house horses and wagons. After a third warehouse was built there in 1918, the company had 100,000 square feet of storage.6
Pike and Pine Streets between downtown and the summit of Capitol Hill were regraded in the early 1900s to provide access to the rapidly growing neighborhood. Similarly, the streets in the 12th Avenue area just east of the subject site were regraded around 1910, although in an attempt to improve development in the area.7 A Seattle Times news piece in 1908 described the subject block and few blocks east of it, citing the need for improving the quality of development
5 Advertisement, The Catholic Progress newspaper, October 14, 1904, p.5. Confusingly, another school, called Academy of Holy Names, was located at Jackson and 7th Avenue at the same time, and was “a Catholic Institution of Higher Education for Young Women.” Advertisements for both appear next to each other in the newspaper cited. It was that school which moved in 1908 to an ornate new building on 21st Avenue on Capitol Hill, and is today known as Holy Names Academy. 6 “The founding of Bekins Moving and Storage Company—the 1900s,” Bekins company website, www.bekinsmovingandstorage.com/about/company-history.html. 7 Ketcherside, Rob, “The tunnel from Capitol Hill to downtown that never happened,” CHS Re:Take, January 29, 2012.
Nicholson Kovalchick Architects – Great Western Motors Building Seattle Landmark Nomination – July 24, 2013 10 in that immediate area (at that time, the portion of Union Street where the subject site is located, between Broadway and 11th Avenue, was relatively narrow):
“Some businesses has already developed along Pine, Pike and Madison from Broadway east, but it is rather of a cheap sort and not such as adds greatly to property values. Taken as a whole, the Twelfth Avenue district looms large in possible development, but shows small in actual improvement. Portions of it have even taken a bad start backward, as for instance around the narrow part of East Union Street, and show a tendency to run to shacks, stables and so forth to the jeopardy of property values.” 8
Because the area was a saddle or low depression between hills, the regrade work in the vicinity consisted primarily of fill rather than cuts. Particularly in the area around 11th Avenue between E. Pike and E. Union Streets, a block east of the subject site, the interior of lots were left considerably below the grade of the adjoining streets. The low rise a few blocks east of the subject site was sometimes referred to as “Second Hill.”
Prior to or as part of this regrading, the boundaries of the site were altered. The parcels at the subject location had originally measured 60 feet by approximately 151 feet. In the early 1900s, a strip of the northernmost parcel measuring between 18 and 22 feet in depth along Union Street was acquired by the City of Seattle for right of way widening. However, the right of way to the east—today known as Broadway Court—was narrowed, so that the width of all of the parcels abutting it were enlarged by 7 feet (from the original 151 feet to about 158 feet).
By the time of the construction of the subject building in 1920, the character of the neighborhood had been significantly affected by the growing popularity of the automobile, and the area came to be known as “Auto Row.”
B. The development of the Pike-Pine “Auto Row” in Seattle
Pike Street, because of its grade, was one of the first streets as one departed the downtown area that could be easily improved to reach Capitol Hill. Gently-sloped Pine was also improved as a roadway and more streetcar lines, parallel to Pike, connected up to Broadway from downtown by 1891 and upgraded in 1901. Nearly flat Broadway was also an early paved street, and had one of the few north-south streetcar lines that did not go through downtown, but rather connecting Capitol Hill and First Hill.
Where streetcar lines went, automobiles soon followed. The first sold in 1905, but to a city still used to streetcars, horse transportation, or walking, the new automobiles were essentially toys for the wealthy. Because Pike and Pine were the easiest connection to Broadway, and Broadway connected the wealthy First Hill and Capitol Hill enclaves, the Pike-Pine-Broadway area began to develop into an early “Auto Row,” characterized by numerous dealerships, auto repair shops, parts suppliers, paint shops, parking garages, used car dealers, and the like.9 [See photos p. 51]
Automobile dealerships would have been the most prominent buildings in the Auto Row area, usually located at the most visible locations and in ornate, architect-designed buildings. The early examples of these buildings were generally fire-resistive construction of concrete or brick, two to four stories tall, with large showroom or garage spaces on the first floor, and service areas or parking or offices on upper floors. All floors were connected by ramps or large automobile-sized elevators. At the beginning of the 20th century in Seattle, automobiles were purchased from local distributors after selecting a model from an auto show, a showroom, or from literature. The vehicle would be delivered months later. Unlike today, there were a wide range of manufacturers competing for market share—not only Ford and Chrysler, but now-departed brands like Paige, Federal, Menominee, Chalmers, Saxon, Bauch-Lang Electric, Seldon, Mitchell, Hupmobile, Pierce-Arrow, Case, REO, Willys-Overland, Peerless, Packard, Studebaker, and others.10
8 “Regraders to fill a valley—explanation of the Twelfth Avenue improvement plan and some of the benefits to be gained thereby,” Seattle Times, June 28, 1908, p.65. 9 Today also referred to as the “Pike-Pine Corridor.” 10 Sheridan, p.27; BOLA, p.5.
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Seattle’s population in this period was growing exponentially, and automobile purchases grew with it, due to increased familiarity with the new technology, and increasingly moderate prices. From 1890 to 1900 the Seattle population had nearly doubled over the decade, to 80,761. City boundaries expanded through several 1907 annexations, such that by 1910 the population had nearly tripled to 237,194, and to approximately 327,000 in 1920.11
The growth of vehicle ownership resulted in large numbers of secondary businesses springing up to provide support and services. Automobile-related listings in the Seattle Polk’s Directory had grown substantially; for example, by 1915, there were 55 businesses listed under “Automobile Manufacturers and Dealers,” but nearly twice as many—102— listed under “Automobile Repairs and Supplies.” These services included various headings such as “Automobile Accessories,” “Automobile Fenders, Lamps, and Radiators,” “Automobile Gasoline,” and so forth. Some automobile listings appear to be addressing a public still used to horses and carriages—for example, the 1915 directory has subheadings such as “Automobile Tops and Trimmings,” “Automobile Liveries (See Garages),” and even “Automobile Hospitals.”
Unlike the automobile dealerships, auto services were often likely to be located in more utilitarian structures, and often on the side streets of the Auto Row area. Garages and some service buildings were built of masonry or concrete fire-resistive construction like the auto dealerships, except less ornate. Between these masonry structures were also found simple wood-frame shop or service buildings, usually only one story.
Beginning around the 1920s, other “auto rows” began to appear over the decades in other parts of Seattle, and auto- related service businesses began to be not necessarily associated with the Pike-Pine-Broadway area. In the Depression years of the 1930s, many auto businesses closed and some dealerships moved to selling used cars. In the postwar years of the late 1940s, dealerships moved to expansive outdoor lots and new buildings as they followed suburban development. In the Pike-Pine area during the past several decades, many former automotive-related concrete, masonry, and heavy-timber structures were adapted to residential, retail, entertainment, and institutional uses.
Today, the Pike-Pine Corridor has several former auto dealership buildings and automobile service buildings that have been cited in city surveys as having a high degree of integrity. Automobile-related buildings cited in the Sound Transit environmental impact statement include the Seattle Automobile Company (1000 E. Pike) and the Lieback Garage (1101 E. Pike), which concluded that they may be eligible for National Register or city landmark status. The Historic Property Survey Report for Seattle’s Neighborhood Commercial Districts cites the following buildings as notable:12 • Utrecht Art Supplies, a former Packard dealership (1120 Pike) • AEI Music, a former Packard dealership (1600 Broadway) • The former Tyson Automobile Company (903 E. Pine) • The former Graham Motor Cars (915 E. Pike) • The former Colyear Auto Sales, later occupied by REI (1021 E. Pine)
C. Building owners and occupants
Owners Occupants 1920 Edward Francis Sweeney 1920-23 Great Western Motors (Paige showroom) 1933 James J. Brennan 1923-29 General Motors Truck Company 1959 Shipman Surgical Company 1925-29 Yellow Taxicab, Truck & Coach (General Motors) 1963 Prottas & Levitt Furniture Company 1930-33 Empire Motors 1967 University Way Properties 1933-35 Unknown (vacant?) 1977 University Way Associates 1935-59 Piston Service Inc. 1988 James J. Keating 1960-63 Vacant 1991 K&B Properties 1964 Prottas & Levitt Furniture Company 2003 Broadway Development LLC 1965 General Leasing Furniture 2008 The Polyclinic 1965 Paris American Labs / Paris American Supply 1999 Complete Automotive Today Unoccupied/Used for storage
11 Ochsner, Shaping Seattle Architecture, pp. xviii-xxxii. 12 Sheridan, p.27.
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First owners and tenants: Edward Francis Sweeney and the Great Western Motors Company The subject building was constructed in 1920 as an automotive showroom and service facility for the Great Western Motors Company. The owner of the property and developer of the building at that time was Edward F. Sweeney. [See historic photos pp. 39-41]
Sweeney was born May 10, 1860 in San Francisco and educated at St. Mary’s College there. He moved to Seattle in 1883 and founded Sweeney & Rule brewery in Georgetown with a partner, but became the sole owner a few months later. In 1889, he reorganized and incorporated the firm as the Claussen-Sweeney Brewing Company with H. J. Claussen, and himself as president. By 1889, the brewery was producing a million gallons a year. In 1893, the Claussen- Sweeney brewery merged with the Hemrich family’s Bay View Brewery, and the Albert Braun Brewery, forming the Seattle Brewing and Malting Company. This would evolve a few years later into one of the largest breweries in the country.13 Sweeney initially served as an officer of the firm, but sold his interests in the brewery in 1906. He then expanded into finance, becoming a trustee of the National Bank of Commerce of Seattle, vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, as well as a developer of real estate projects. He built and operated the Savoy Hotel on Second Avenue in 1906, until selling it in 1911.14
Great Western Motors was originally founded as the Paige Motor Sales Company of Washington in 1916 to be the distributor for the Paige brand of automobiles in the Northwest. Within a few years they had reorganized under the name Great Western Motors. Paige automobiles were mid-range in price and luxury, and were frequently advertised under the tagline “The Most Beautiful Car in America.” George M. Price was President of Great Western, Fred W. Hill was Vice President, and V. C. Foree was secretary/treasurer. Little additional information of significance could be found about them.
Great Western Motors’ first showroom was located at 903 E. Pike Street, today known as the Tyson Building, which had been constructed in 1912 at the southeast corner of Broadway and Pike (at that time, the company was still the Paige Motor Sales Company of Washington). The showroom was a small space with twenty feet of street frontage, because the building was occupied by other tenants, including other automobile companies.
The company outgrew this space quickly and moved in 1917 into a new building specifically built for them by E. F. Sweeney at the southwest corner of Boylston Avenue and E. Pine Street, and leased to them as tenants. The architect was Victor Voorhees. The entrance was from Boylston and the driveway into the building was located on Pine. This building was three stories and featured a showroom at the ground floor, the parts department on the second floor, with shop and service on the third floors, with an automobile elevator connecting the levels. Newspaper accounts describe the building having terrazzo floors, a mezzanine housing the accounting and general offices, and windows opening off the balcony overlooking the showroom floor. Period renderings and early photos show a projecting cornice at the roofline and letters forming the name “Paige” within a shaped parapet; however, the projecting cornice was later removed and a row of decorative diamond-shaped tiles were placed at the roofline below the parapet. Today, the building remains at that location but has been altered, and is occupied by a nightclub and bar. 15
By 1919 increasing sales of Paige cars pushed the company to find an even larger space to show and service their vehicles, resulting in the company’s move into the subject building in 1920, which Sweeney had built specifically for them, and again served as their landlord, and again designed by Victor Voorhees.
Newspaper accounts with perhaps some boosterish hyperbole describe this, the subject building of this report, as “one of the largest automobile showrooms in Seattle” at that time.16 The design was specifically intended to move away from multi-level automobile sales and service buildings: “The floor space of the service department will be as large as the total floor space of the present building occupied by the firm... the location of the shops and service department on
13 Bagley, p.626. 14 Bagley, p.485. The Savoy Hotel was originally constructed as an eight-story building, but four floors were added in 1907. The site is now occupied by the Washington Mutual Tower, which was constructed 1986-88. 15 “Three-Story Building to be Erected as new Home of Paige Firm”, The Seattle Times, June 17, 1917, p.7; and “Paige in Handsome New Home”, The Seattle Times Automobiles Section, November 4, 1917, p.1-2 16 “Great Western Motors Planning New Building,” The Seattle Times, January 11, 1920.
Nicholson Kovalchick Architects – Great Western Motors Building Seattle Landmark Nomination – July 24, 2013 13 the ground floor makes them more accessible, a fact that will be greatly appreciated by Paige users.”17 The service department was intended to be exceptionally large in order to conveniently take care of customers after their new car purchase. A 1920 newspaper photo shows the showroom floor of the subject building decorated for the grand opening, with potted plants, benches, and flowers among the parked Paige model automobiles.
In 1922, Great Western began to sell Jewett automobiles, a lower-priced brand developed by Paige.18 A news article in July of that year noted that Great Western Motors recently “added [a] used car department... The addition of the popular Jewett Six line to their line necessitated more room and the building on Tenth Avenue, just around the corner from the Great Western Motors, was rented for the used car department. The building is the one formerly occupied by Swartz & Bridgeman [a service garage].” The aforementioned building on Tenth Avenue could not be identified, but according to Polk’s Directories, a Swartz & Bridgeman garage was located at “10th Ave & E. Seneca” from 1920 through 1922, a half a block south of the subject site.19
Sweeney died unexpectedly on January 31, 1923, while visiting his wife’s family in Brooklyn, New York, and the news was announced in The Seattle Times the next day.20 On March 1, 1923, articles of incorporation were filed by J. G. Tennant, to form J. G. Tennant, Inc., and on March 4, it was announced that Tennant had purchased Paige and Jewett franchise in Seattle. Great Western Motors was apparently bought out, and the firm disappears, eventually stricken from the Washington State corporations log in 1925. Because the company seemed to fail the same time that Sweeney died, it seems possible that he was a significant investor in the firm, although there is no indication that he was an officer of the company.21 It is unclear whether the building continued to be used in the months following.
The new Tennant dealership did not occupy the subject building, but moved immediately into an existing c.1916 building at the northwest corner of 12th Avenue and E. Pike Street, remodeled to accommodate the new company. The shop was open and accepting customers by March 11. J. G. Tennant had first sold Mercedes and Northern automobiles in Chicago in 1904, then the Peerless line in 1906. He came to Seattle in 1911 as an automobile dealer for the same. In 1912 he moved back to Chicago, where he was the National and Abbot-Detroit dealer for ten years. He returned to Seattle in 1923, just before purchasing the Paige and Jewett dealership. Strangely, just eight months later in November 1923, Tennant announced that he had cancelled his contract with Paige, and would remain in Seattle but engage in a new business unrelated to the automobile industry. By 1926, Tennant and his wife had moved to San Francisco. 22
Later owners and tenants In September 1923, the General Motors Truck Company announced that the subject building would house a new factory branch location to provide retail sales and service in Seattle, and to serve as the district office for Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho.23 Their sales office had previously been on E. Pike at the Eldridge Buick Company. The building’s interior was repainted and redecorated, and the portion devoted to parts and service was enlarged and reconfigured. R. A. Sweet was the district sales manager at the time the company moved into the space. The company’s product line included Yellow Taxicabs, Trucks, and Coaches, a subsidiary of General Motors. [See historic photos pp. 42-44]
In October 1929, the Seattle offices of the General Motors Truck Company left the subject building and moved to a new custom-built one-story building at Maynard Avenue and Charles Street, consolidating their offices in Seattle and Spokane. That structure was built for them by Frye Investment Company.24
17 “Great Western Motors Planning New Building,” The Seattle Times, January 11, 1920. 18 “It has set a new standard...” advertisement, The Seattle Times, September 3, 1922. 19 “Great Western Motors used car department,” The Seattle Times, July 16, 1922, p.27. 20 “Edward F. Sweeney of Seattle dies in East,” The Seattle Times, February 1, 1923. 21 In fact, he is specifically not listed in news accounts. See “Great Western Motors Planning New Building,” The Seattle Times, January 11, 1920. 22 All from The Seattle Times: “Articles of incorporation,” March 2, 1923, p.22; “Tennant gets agencies,” March 4, 1923, p.19; “New agency opened—Paige and Jewett move to 12th and Pike,” March 11, 1923, p.17; “Building that houses Paige and Jewett dealer” illustration, March 18, 1923, p.20; and “Tennant closing out,” November 11, 1923, p.5. 23 “General Motors Truck Company Opens Seattle Branch”, The Seattle Daily Times, September 30, 1923, p.7. 24 “General Motors Truck Building Being Erected,” The Seattle Times, August 4, 1929, p.3.
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In the early 1930s, the subject building was occupied by Empire Motors, a Dodge Brothers sales and service dealership founded by brothers A. B. and A. H. McConnell. Both had been in the automobile business since 1915. Little additional information could be found regarding them. By 1933, the firm had moved to another address, on Pike Street.
In 1935, James J. Brennen purchased the subject property from the heirs of E. F. Sweeney to be used by his company, Piston Service Inc.
James “Jim” Brennen was born in Alexandria, Scotland where he worked as an apprentice to the Argyle Motor Works, learning to be a machinist. He later immigrated to the United States and settled in Seattle. There he opened a small shop named the Motor Parts Machine Company, focusing on re-boring cylinders, cutting gears, regrinding crankshafts, and other automotive needs. Brennen also began stocking a few replacement parts for sale to meet the growing demand. As the business grew, it transformed into Piston Service, Inc., the first auto parts store on the Pacific Coast, and one of the first in the United States. He opened branch stores in Tacoma, Everett, Bellingham, Aberdeen, Yakima and Wenatchee, with eleven branches in all. When he moved the headquarters to this building from its previous location at 801 East Pike Street, he arranged the machine shop to take advantage of the large plate glass display windows so that passersby could watch the machinery in action. This location would also serve as the wholesale parts warehouse for the branch stores.25 Polk’s Seattle Directories show that Piston Service Inc. would continue operations until 1959, and then close for reasons not discovered.26
In 1959, the B. W. Shipman Surgical Company purchased the building from James Brennen and relocated from 1205 E. Pike Street, using it as a surgical supply display room and stock warehouse, perhaps due to the growing presence of hospitals on First Hill nearby. The company also had branches in Tacoma, and agencies in Bellingham and Longview. Shipman Surgical Company was sold to Will Ross Inc. in 1960, and they moved their headquarters to a new building at 2001 22nd Avenue South in 1961.27
The building was vacant until sold to Prottas & Levitt Furniture Company in 1963. Polk’s Seattle City Directories show it was briefly used as a furniture warehouse for the company’s sales showrooms. The company had been in business since 1902 when it was founded by brothers Sam, Nathan and A. L. Levitt along with brother-in-law Sam Prottas. The first store was located at Second Avenue and Bell Street, then moved to Second and Pine. In 1960 they added a Sixth Avenue store, before closing the Second and Pine store in 1964. Prottas & Levitt was purchased and absorbed into Doces Sixth Avenue, another furniture store, in 1966.28 During this period, the address of the subject building changed from 905 E. Union Street to 1158 Broadway.
Prior to Prottas & Levitt’s purchase by Doces in 1966, the company began leasing space in the subject building to other tenants. Advertisements listed General Leasing Furniture’s offices in the building during 1965.29 Later that same year, Paris Beauty Supply, a major wholesale supplier of products for beauty salons in the Greater Seattle area, took over the entire building. They had been operating across the street at 1159 Broadway, and expanded their operations into this building as well.30 Paris Beauty Supply would occupy the property for approximately 35 years until they ceased operations in 1998 or 1999.
The subject building’s ownership changed several times while Paris Beauty Supply was a tenant. Prottas & Levitt sold to University Way Properties in 1967, who transferred it to University Way Associates in 1977. It was sold in 1988 to James J. Keating and again in 1991 to K&B Properties. While under K&B Properties’ ownership, Paris Beauty Supply closed and in 1999 automobiles returned to the building when it was used as a used car showroom and service facility for Complete Automotive. They downsized to a smaller location on Dexter Avenue during the economic downturn in
25 “Local Piston Service Company to Hold Open house”, The Seattle Times, February 16, 1938, p.2. 26 In later years, James Brennen lived on a ranch in Sequim before briefly moving back to Scotland, but then returned to the United States. He and his wife settled in Poulsbo, where they bought a 158 acre farm and began building a 15- room Georgian style home. However, before the new home could be finished, Brennen died in a traffic accident in 1963. His wife completed the house, and continued working the property as a breeding farm. See “Cattle Breeder is Quite a Scottish ‘Lass’”, The Seattle Times, September 24, 1967, p.91. 27 “Surgical Supply Firm in New Building”, The Seattle Times, September 10, 1961, p.30. 28 “Doces Brothers Purchase Two Furniture Stores”, The Seattle Times, November 6, 1966, p. 88. 29 Advertisement, The Seattle Times, June 20, 1965, p.12, middle of right column. 30 “Beauty-Supply Wholesale Firm Leases Space,” The Seattle Times, October 31, 1965, p.39.
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2010, and the building has been vacant since.31 In 2008 it was sold to its current owner, The Polyclinic, who uses the building for light office storage.
D. Paige automobiles
Fredrick Osgood Paige was born in 1863 and moved as a young child with his family to Detroit. He worked in the insurance business, and in 1904 helped organize the Reliance Motor Car Company. The company started out building cars but soon switched to trucks before General Motors bought the company, and Paige was out of the business. He began designing his own car, and in 1909 partnered with Harry M. Jewett to raise money from other Detroit businessmen in order to launch the Paige-Detroit Motor Car Company. Together they built the first Paige-Detroit in 1910, an $800 lightweight two-seater roadster named Challenger. 32 [See historic photos p. 41]
After one year in business and selling 800 cars, Jewett became concerned about the company’s prospects, and it was at this time that Fredrick Paige left the business. Paige later established the Paige & Jones Chemical Company specializing in water softening treatment, before retiring in 1930 to Los Angeles. There he died in 1935 at age 71. Jewett continued on with the company as its new president. In 1912 the company began to refer to their cars strictly as “Paiges,” dropping Detroit from the name, and gave the cars stylish names such as the Beverly, Pinehurst, and La Marquise.
The Paige Motor Car Company began offering more luxurious automobile interiors and options, while maintaining moderate pricing, even offering larger touring cars and town cars meant to be chauffer-driven. In 1918 General Motors Company approached Jewett in an attempt to purchase the company, but their offer was rebuffed. Sales continued to grow through the end of the decade, but the entire industry slowed down in 1921 due to a post-war depression—only a year after the subject building of this report was constructed. By this time Paiges had evolved into larger, more substantial cars with price tags to match, leading the company to launch a lower-priced six-cylinder line of cars that seated five. These were named “Jewett,” after the company’s president. These cars proved very successful, selling over twenty thousand autos in the first year compared to just over nine thousand Paige models.
Better times returned to the nation and the company saw its sales steadily climb through the mid-1920s, though the firm’s profits failed to keep pace with sales. 1926 saw the end of the Jewett models, which were re-badged as Paiges just before another big change arrived the following year: Jewett agreed to sell his portion of the company to the Graham Brothers and left the automotive industry in 1927. He went on to serve as president of Colonial Laundry Company of Detroit and died in 1933 at age sixty-two.
Joseph, Robert, and Ray Graham had purchased Paige for $4 million and a pledge to spend $4 million more on improvements.33 The Graham brothers had previously owned a glass bottle company, which they sold to Owens Bottle Company, then moved into the automotive industry in 1921 by building truck bodies on passenger car chassis for Dodge. The partnership with was short lived, and they sold their portion of the company to Dodge in 1926. Their desire to continue in the automotive industry let to the acquisition of Paige. For a short time they continued building cars under the Paige name, but within months had designed a new model line to be called Graham-Paige cars, priced from $860-$2,485. Production climbed from 21,881 in 1927 to 73,195 in 1928, a sales record for a new make in its first year. However, 1928 was to be their peak year financially as the oncoming Great Depression saw sales plunge to 33,560 in 1930, 20,428 in 1931, and only 12,967 in 1932. In the summer of 1932, Ray Graham committed suicide by drowning while driving with his brother Robert to a mental institution, possibly due to business pressures during the Depression.
In 1934, Graham-Paige introduced the first supercharged engine available in a moderately priced production car. Previously only cars such as Duesenberg, Stutz, or Franklin had been associated with such engines. In 1936 the Graham brothers restyled the line to match the more fluid styling of its competitors and began marketing their supercharged 6-cylinders as a more fuel efficient but equally powerful competitor to other manufacturer’s 8-cylinders. Still losing money however, the company tried manufacturing farm tractors in an attempt to utilize their manufacturing
31 Phone interview with Brian Burns of Complete Automotive, by Chris Jones of NK Architects, May 13, 2013. 32 Keller, Michael E., The Graham Legacy: Graham-Paige to 1932, New York: 1998, pp.24-27. 33 Godshall, J. Il, “The Graham Brothers and Their Car.” Automobile Quarterly, Volume 18, No. 1.
Nicholson Kovalchick Architects – Great Western Motors Building Seattle Landmark Nomination – July 24, 2013 16 capacity but met with limited success. During the early 40s Graham-Paige went from making cars to armaments for the war, building an amphibious tractor, aircraft engines, PT boat engines, and torpedoes.
In 1944, Joe Graham sold 530,000 shares of the company to Joseph W. Frazer of the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation, who assumed control of Graham-Paige as a result. With the war over, Frazer announced the company would return to the automobile business, but the new car would carry the Frazer name. Sales were good, but retooling and production costs were prohibitive, so in 1947 the Graham-Paige company shareholders sold off the company’s remaining automotive assets to Kaiser-Frazer. The Graham-Paige Motor Corporation continued on with its tractor manufacturing business until 1949, then divested itself of the word “Motor” in its name and became primarily a real estate holding company in New York City. In 1962 they changed the company name to that of its most famous holding, Madison Square Garden, marking the end of the name Paige as a brand.
E. The architect, Victor W. Voorhees
The designer of the subject building was Victor Wilbur Voorhees Jr., a well-known and prolific architect and engineer in Seattle from 1904 to 1958. Though he is most known for his influence of the “Seattle Box” homes and his publication of Western Home Builder early in his career, he also produced many commercial buildings throughout Seattle. [See photos of Voorhees’ work pp. 52-59]
Information on Voorhees’ background is limited.34 Voorhees was born in 1876 in Cambria, Wisconsin, to Victor Voorhees Sr. and Violetta Irons. He primarily grew up In Minneapolis, having moved there with his family at the age of 5 in 1881. As a young adult, he studied law at the recently established Minneapolis Academy and worked in general construction.35
In 1904, Voorhees moved from Minneapolis to Seattle and worked in the building department of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Line for roughly a year. By the end of 1904, he quit his job and established himself as an architect in Ballard.36 His first partnership, Fisher & Voorhees, lasted less than a year, and by 1905 Voorhees was operating out if the Eitel Building in downtown Seattle, under the partnership of Voorhees & Palmer.37 That partnership also dissolved quickly, and beginning in 1906, Voorhees was operating on his own, though still retaining his office in the Eitel Building.38
For the majority of his career, from 1906 to 1944, Voorhees was the principal of his own firm, Victor W. Voorhees, Architect, and designed a variety of buildings throughout Seattle, including garages and auto show rooms, laundry buildings, retail buildings, factories, apartment buildings and single family homes.
A comprehensive list of Voorhees’ diverse works has apparently not been compiled. The most extensive discovered for this report found over one hundred buildings attributed to Voorhees in period newspapers, primarily the Seattle Daily Bulletin and later the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.39 That list, however, is not exhaustive, as the subject building of this report is not included.
Voorhees’ early career was marked primarily with single family homes. It was during this time that he published Western Home Builder, a plan book of 120 homes from which prospective home owners could order blueprints and specifications. The book was in its sixth edition by 1911; uncounted numbers of homes in the early neighborhoods of Seattle were built through Voorhees’ plans in this way.40 By 1907, he had started designing small apartment buildings as well.
34 Biographical information primarily derived from an unpublished biography by Don Glickstein, available at the Seattle Central Library, Seattle Collection. 35 Glickstein, Don, “Victor Voorhees and the prospering of Seattle,” unpublished biography, 2001, p. 2. 36 Glickstein, p. 2. 37 “Voorhees, Victor”, Pacific Coast Architecture Database, retrieved April 30, 2013. 38 “Voorhees, Victor”, Pacific Coast Architecture Database, retrieved April 30, 2013. 39 An unpublished list of Victor Voorhees work, compiled by Seattle historian Kathryn Krafft in 2001, is available at the Seattle Central Library, Seattle Collection. Krafft’s list was used in Glickstein’s biography of Voorhees. 40 Glickstein, pp.3-4.
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Though the majority of his early work focused on single family homes, he designed other kinds of buildings as well. In 1906 he designed the First Danish-Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church at the corner of Stewart Street and Boren Avenue.41 In 1907 Voorhees designed the Welsh Presbyterian Church at the corner of 10th Ave E. and E. John Street.42 Both churches have since been demolished.
In 1908 Voorhees designed the Washington Hall of Danish Brotherhood, located at 153 14th Avenue. It was originally built for the Danish Brotherhood in America as a settlement house, but has housed many different cultural groups over its existence. It was designated a Seattle Historic Landmark in July 2010.43
Voorhees also designed the Old Georgetown City Hall, located at 6202 13th Avenue South, although the building as originally designed lacked the clock tower that exists today.44 Shortly after construction finished, Georgetown was annexed to Seattle, and the new City Hall ceased to be used as such.45 The building is a designated Seattle landmark, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.46
While Voorhees’ career continued to gain momentum with apartment buildings and single family residences, he began pick up contracts for retail spaces and garages. As the “Auto Row” area of Capitol Hill began to bustle with new development, Voorhees was contracted for several of these new garages. For each year between 1912 through 1917, Voorhees appears to have designed approximately twelve residential or commercial projects per year, of which several were automobile-related structures, and the majority of those were located in the Pike-Pine “Auto Row” area.
One of Voorhees’ earliest automobile-related building designs dates from 1912. Two newspaper articles specified that he had been commissioned to design a two-story concrete and brick garage for C. C. Roe, at 1424 Broadway, just south of Pike Street.47 The 60 x 128 foot structure was described as mill construction, with a foundation designed to permit additional stories. A truss roof provided a clear floor area on the second floor, which was to be used as a store and salesroom. The building was valued at $28,000 and construction began in April of that year. At the same time, construction was already underway in the adjacent parcel at the corner of Pike Street and Broadway for a three-story steel, concrete, and brick building designed by Charles Haynes. This structure was designed for the Lozier Company, but is today known as the Tyson Building, at 905 E. Pike Street. One of its shop fronts in 1916 was the first location of the Great Western Motors Company, the original occupant of the subject building of this report.
Also in 1912, Voorhees began to design another garage building for the northwest corner of 12th Avenue and E. Union Street for L. S. Roe, today addressed as 1401 12th Avenue. The structure was described as one story with basement, measuring 121 feet square overall, concrete and mill construction, and estimated to cost approximately $22,000.48 As completed, the “great basement” of this building was intended to serve as the commercial garage, and the ground floor frontage to be storefronts. The foundation was designed to eventually support three stories, although this was never carried out. The building was completed in 1913, and is today still in use, greatly altered, as a Ferrari automobile showroom.
41 “This Will Be A Big Realty Month,” The Seattle Times, February 18, 1906, p. 38. 42 Photo Caption, The Seattle Times, May 26, 1907, p. 44. 43 “Washington Hall of Danish Brotherhood Building, Central District, Seattle, WA”, Pacific Coast Architecture Database, retrieved April 30, 2013. Washington Hall played an important role in Seattle’s African-American community history when many stage venues were still segregated. 44 “Georgetown Soon to Have New Municipal Building,” The Seattle Times, January 9, 1909, p. 5. 45 Glickstein, p. 4. 46 “Old Georgetown City Hall,” National Register of Historic Places Form, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, prepared April 14, 1983. 47 “Another garage for Broadway planned,” The Seattle Times, April 10, 1912. See also “Among the Architects,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, April 7, 1912; this article states that the name of the developer was E. C. Roe, and that he was the developer of the Roe Apartments on Pike Street near 9th Avenue. 48 “Building News,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, October 10, 1912; see also “Broadway district developing rapidly,” The Seattle Times, June 22, 1913.
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Continuing in 1912, Voorhees designed another garage at 915 E. Pike Street for James Plumber, now used as retail and office space. The three-story reinforced concrete structure measured 60 x 98 feet and was valued at $6,000.49 The Seattle Department of Neighborhoods historic inventory for this building states that the building is an early and intact example of an urban auto dealership, featuring a showroom with large display windows, car storage in the rear, with auto parts storage on upper floors; the large Chicago-style pivoting windows on the second floor are particularly noted. Over the years, the building housed various dealerships including Chevrolet, Graham, and REO. Like Voorhees’ 1424 Broadway building mentioned above, this structure is also directly adjacent to the Tyson building, along Pike, which was under construction at the same time.
In 1912 Voorhees designed an automobile garage for L. Kay at 1022 E. Pike Street, which was constructed in the spring and summer of 1913.50 This building, located at the northwest corner of 11th Avenue and E. Pike Street, was to be occupied by J. W. Leavitt & Company, the agents for Overland automobiles. At the time, the 64 x 112 foot reinforced concrete building was only built to a height of two stories, but with a valuation of $30,000, it was described as “one of the costlier new buildings now under construction.” 51 The builder was David Dow.
In 1915, Voorhees was contracted to design two additional stories for this 1022 E. Pike structure, by that time known as the Leavitt Building, which added 14,000 square feet of floor space, for a total of 36,000 square feet in the building overall.52 By 1915, the J. W. Leavitt Company was described as the Pacific Coast distributors for Overland and Willys Utility motor cars, which were produced in Indianapolis, Indiana. The addition was valued at $12,600 and completed in 1917. Enlargement of the space allowed a reorganization of the various departments occupying the building. In the new configuration, the large basement was devoted to warehousing automobiles for availability during rush periods when the factory orders exceeded capacity; in fact, the basement was equipped with “an overhead holding device by which machines are suspended from the ceiling... [which] doubles the capacity of the room.” The first floor was occupied by the sales department and showroom; on the second floor was the service and parts department. The new third floor was devoted to used automobiles, which was growing due to the company’s sales policy which allowed a purchaser to turn in an old Overland automobile as partial payment for a new one. The new fourth floor was occupied by a work and paint shop, presumably focused as much on their used car stock as repairs to customer’s automobiles. The original 1913 project was most likely Voorhees’ first work for the Overland automobile company. Today, the building is occupied by the Monique Lofts condominiums.
Voorhees completed five commercial garages in 1916. One of these garages, for A. Schlossmacher and located at 1132 Broadway Court at 10th Avenue and Seneca Street, is still standing one block south of the subject building, although it has been altered significantly. The building was described as a one-story brick garage with basement, measuring 60 x 120 feet, and costing about $10,000. The builder was E. A. Nelson.53 Another garage was located not on “Auto Row,” but at 700 S. Jackson Street in today’s International District. This one-story, reinforced concrete and brick facade building remains intact and continues to be used as an automotive garage.54
The other three garages dating to 1916 appear to have been demolished, or may never have been built. One was at the northwest corner of 12th Avenue and E. Pine, for the North Pacific Oakland Company (tax records indicate that the building currently at that location dates from 1927). The structure was described as two stories with basement and mezzanine, reinforced concrete and mill construction, and measuring 52 x 121 feet. The building featured terrazzo floors, steam heating, one freight elevator, and construction value was estimated to be $25,000.55
A second demolished 1916 garage was located at 1701 Broadway, at the northwest corner of Olive Street. It was built by Sandven & Sundt, for the Garford Motor Truck Company on land owned by the Clapp Estate. The one-story-with-
49 “Building News,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, October 22, 1912. 50 “Important building permits, May 23,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, May 24, 1913. 51 “Broadway District Developing Rapidly,” The Seattle Times, June 22, 1913, p. 38. 52 “Contract Let For Enlarging Auto Building,” The Seattle Times, January 24, 1915, p. 42; see also “Complete Plans for Apartments,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, February 8, 1917. 53 Seattle Daily Bulletin, May 2, 1916, addressed then as 952 E. Seneca. The building is now occupied by The File Box self-storage company. 54 Seattle Daily Bulletin, January 5, 1916. 55 “New home for Oakland Car,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, September 7, 1916.
Nicholson Kovalchick Architects – Great Western Motors Building Seattle Landmark Nomination – July 24, 2013 19 basement structure measured 120 x 128 feet, was constructed of brick and concrete, and had an estimated cost of $25,000.56 Today the site is occupied by the Seattle Central Community College.
A third 1916 garage was designed for Frank W. Palmer and was located on 11th Avenue between Pike and Pine Streets. It was described as four stories with basement, 60 x 120 feet in area, with reinforced concrete walls and mill construction interior, and valued at $50,000. The building featured a freight elevator and was to “be used by an automobile agency just located here” but the agency was not named. This structure may not have been built. However, the same article also mentions a $10,000 two-story automobile accessories building designed by Voorhees for Cohen Brothers at 1110 E. Pike Street between 11th and 12th Avenues; the occupant was the Goodrich Tire Service. This building was concrete with mill construction interior, and built by the Mac Rae Brothers, and completed in 1917. 57 This building remains extant, but altered and repurposed.
The year 1917 was also busy for Voorhees on Auto Row. For the southwest corner double lot at 12th Avenue and E. Pine Street, Voorhees designed a 113 x 180 foot reinforced concrete garage again for the Overland Company (this division known as Overland-Pacific Company), lessee of the building. The property owners were Henry Reese, the Warrack Construction Company, Mrs. C. Riverman and H. Riverman. The building included garage, a large 60 x 120 foot salesroom, a women’s reception room, and a repair shop; and featured cream colored brick cladding, a freight elevator, and terrazzo floors. A mezzanine floor and “double decked basement” enabled the company to store over 350 cars, a news article attested. This building is today somewhat altered, and used as the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct station.58
In August of 1917, the Willys-Overland Company named Voorhees the supervising architect for all of its building projects. One of the first projects Voorhees undertook in this capacity was the construction supervision of a $150,000 reinforced concrete garage and salesroom in Spokane; it is not clear whether this was Voorhees’ design.59 Additional Overland projects could not be located for this report, but presumably they may have been located outside Washington State (by 1922, Willys-Overland had West Coast branches in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno, Portland, Seattle, and Spokane).
Voorhees also had several other “Auto Row” clients in that year. As described in a previous section of this report, he designed a new commercial garage for the Paige Motor Sales Company at the southwest corner of E. Pine Street and Boylston Avenue—the building occupied by Paige Motors immediately before they occupied the subject building of this report.60 Another Voorhees-designed building, at 12th Avenue and E. Pine Street, began construction in August 1917, to be occupied by Ballou & Wright, an automobile accessories dealer. The concrete and brick veneer structure measured 60 x 113 feet and was three stories in height. The builder was I. S. Harding, and the construction value was estimated to be $35,000. The owner was Cornelius Mehan.61
Voorhees had a total of approximately ten projects alone in 1917, and approximately ten publicized in 1924, including apartment buildings, commercial buildings, remodel jobs, stores, garages, and so forth.62 However, only a handful of projects by Voorhees could be uncovered for the entire six years between about 1918 to 1923, based on available inventories of his work, and available databases. The reasons for this apparent and unusual dearth of work, or perhaps
56 “Soon start truck garage,” Seattle Daily Business, September 14, 1916; and “Plans for Garford branch home announced,” The Seattle Times, October 8, 1916. 57 “Plan 4 story garage on Eleventh Ave,” Seattle Daily Business, December 18, 1916; additional article about the tire store include “Contract awarded,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, January 13, 1917; and “New building for Goodrich Tire Service,” The Seattle Times, January 21, 1917, p.2. 58 “Overland to Erect Building,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, October 24, 1917; and “Break ground for Overland building,” The Seattle Times, November 4, 1917, Automobile section pp.1-2. 59 “Overland Names Seattle Man,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, August 16, 1917. The article refers to Willys-Overland as “a big Eastern firm.” 60 “Contract Let for Garage,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, May 26, 1917. 61 “Store Building Contract Let,” Seattle Daily Bulletin, August 17, 1917. 62 In 1917, work included repairs to a garage, a tire store, an addition to a garage, four apartment buildings, a dye works, two new garages, an auto parts store, and a bank renovation. In 1924, work included four neighborhood commercial buildings, an industrial building, a garment factory, an automobile service garage, an apartment building, and a laundry.
Nicholson Kovalchick Architects – Great Western Motors Building Seattle Landmark Nomination – July 24, 2013 20 lack of publicity for existing work, is unknown. There are few mentions of Voorhees in the Seattle Times at all during this period. Society columns briefly mention that Voorhees’ wife and son visited San Diego for three months in the spring of 1923, apparently without him. Perhaps his work with the Willys-Overland company took him outside of the Seattle area during this period, although no records could be found for this report supporting this theory.
During this period, at least two classified advertisements in 1919 suggest that Voorhees may have been pursuing his own development projects. One lists for lease “Automobile building on corner in center of automobile district. Beautiful show room 60 x 60, paneled, terrazzo floors, ivory finish, plate glass [windows] two sides, shop on second floor 60 x 100 with incline to street. Steam heat furnished. V. W. Voorhees, 411 Eitel Building.” 63 The location of this garage is unclear, but Voorhees may have been the architect and developer for it, although it is also possible that he was acting as an agent for a client. Another classified ad from the same year by V. W. Voorhees offers a furnished 8- room house with garage, for rent, in the Mt. Baker neighborhood.64
In any event, the few projects attributed to Voorhees between 1918 and 1923, that could be found, include the following: • Washington Arms Apartments (1919) at 1065 E. Prospect Street, near Volunteer Park. This well-detailed brick Colonial Revival structure follows a C-shaped entry courtyard plan. An unusual feature is that one of the arms of the building forming the courtyard forms an extremely acute angle in plan, due to the shape of the lot. The client and developer for this project was Mae Young.65 • The subject building of this report (1920). • Seattle Lodge of the Knights of Pythias (1920) at 1929 3rd Avenue, midblock between Stewart and Virginia Streets, in downtown Seattle. This structure features two stories with mezzanine (in appearance, three stories), on a 60 x 108 foot site. The building was valued at $50,000 by Rhodes Brothers, the owners, when it began construction in March 1920. The Knights of Pythias, a fraternal organization, was to occupy the entire upper floors, while the first floor occupant was to be the Wurlitzer Organ Company and the Theater Equipment Company. An unusual feature of the building was the exterior cladding, used for the first time in Seattle, which was described as “a beautiful white stone deposit mined at Mount Angel, Oregon... which is said to have the textile strength of rock and is fireproof... strangely enough, it is said, that this stone can be sawed by any saw that will cut lumber and into any dimensions desired.” 66 By the description, the cladding would appear to be tuff, a volcanic building stone; however, an inspection of the building for this report has not confirmed this; the building may ultimately have been clad in terracotta. • Seattle Gun Club clubhouse (1920) at Fort Lawton. The land was donated by the War Department, and Voorhees donated plans and specifications. Resembling a Craftsman-style home, the design featured a full- width front porch, deeply overhanging eaves, a 30 x 50 foot assembly room, and a large fireplace. Other spaces were devoted to lockers, dressing rooms, ammunition storage, restrooms, a kitchen, and living quarters for the keeper. The building was valued at $10,000 and construction was expected to begin in March 1920 and to be completed in three months, but the building may never have actually been constructed.67 • Apartment and store building at 4747 California Avenue SW in West Seattle (1923, demolished) for W. H. Henwood.
In 1924, citations for architectural projects by Voorhees begin to appear in newspapers again, including four neighborhood commercial buildings, an industrial building, a garment factory, an automobile sales and service garage, an apartment building, and a laundry. Of these, some of the buildings were designed with integral automobile garages (apparently for parking, not for service)—including the neighborhood commercial building at 1400 34th Avenue in Madrona for S. Rogers (the garage portion is now addressed as 3406 E. Union Street); the industrial building located at 413-23 Fairview Avenue (altered) in South Lake Union for A. C. Goerig, to be occupied by the Saxony Knitting
63 “Automobile Building,” classified advertisement under “business opportunities,” The Seattle Times, September 9, 1919, p.27. 64 “Modern 8-room...,” classified advertisement under “furnished houses,” The Seattle Times, November 19, 1919, p.27. 65 Glickstein, p.5. 66 “Pythians are to have new home,” March 21, 1920, p. 24. The article includes a rendering of the front elevation. 67 “Seattle Gun Club to be in home by June for Northwest meet,” The Seattle Times, March 14, 1920, p.3.
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Company; and the neighborhood shops structure at 4305-09 Alaska Street (demolished) in West Seattle for Walter Sutherland.68
The sales and service garage constructed in 1924 may have been Voorhees’ last building directly related to automobile sales or service. No longer extant, it was located at 321 Westlake Avenue in the south Lake Union area, and was described as one story, masonry construction, measuring 60 x 108 feet. The occupant was to be Howell Thompson Motor Company, the distributor of Star automobiles in King County, and the owner of the property was Robinson, Theime & Morris. The estimated construction valuation was $15,000 and the builder was Seattle Construction & Finance Company.69
Around 1924, Voorhees began to work on several real estate investment projects for the Joseph Vance Lumber Company. That year, he designed for them an industrial building occupying the half-block on Terry Avenue between Mercer and Republican Streets, just south of Lake Union. Measuring 420 x 115 feet, the building had three stories with a basement, and was constructed of reinforced concrete on piles with mill construction on the interior. The building featured a large freight elevator for every sixty feet of elevation. Before the building was completed in 1925, half of the building was already secured with a twenty-year lease to the Sherman, Clay & Company wholesale department. The construction value for the building was estimated at between $450,000 and $500,000. 70
Another early project for Vance was the conversion of the former Seattle Engineering School into apartments, in 1925. The building, which is today the Marqueen Hotel, occupies the entire street frontage on Queen Anne Avenue between Roy and Mercer Streets. The remodel project created 68 two- and three-bedroom suites, was estimated to cost $200,000, and was expected to bring the total building value to half a million dollars.71 Shortly thereafter, in 1926, Vance commissioned Voorhees to design the Lloyd Building (a designated Seattle landmark) and the Vance Hotel, both located at the intersection of 6th Avenue and Stewart Street.72 In 1927, Voorhees moved his office from the Eitel Building to the Lloyd Building. In his final work for Vance, Voorhees designed the Joseph Vance Building at 3rd and Union downtown in 1929-30.
Voorhees’ projects for Vance were by far his largest and most complex projects, with considerable architectural detail and sizable budgets. Both the Lloyd Building and the Vance Hotel are ten stories in height, and both are exceeded by the fourteen-story Vance Building. A news article at the time estimated the construction cost of the Vance Hotel to be $450,000, or $5.8 million in today’s dollars.73
Other significant works by Voorhees during his career that should be noted include the Troy Laundry (1927, with additions by Henry Bittman in 1944 and 1946) at 311 Fairview Avenue N., which is today a designated Seattle landmark. Voorhees’ obituary also lists his as the architect of the Maynard Hospital in Seattle (demolished), and the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Spokane.
After completing the Joseph Vance building, and during the subsequent economic depression of the 1930s, Voorhees’ work becomes difficult to trace. Though he continued to lease his office space in the Lloyd Building, until the early
68 “New building on Fairview to cost $45,000,” Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, August 20, 1924; “New building for Junction to cost $20,000 – Architect V. W. Voorhees lets contract to L. B. Russell for store and garage structure on West Alaska Street,” Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, September 24, 1914; and “Bids called on building—Architect V. W. Voorhees wants figures at once on structure containing 7 stores and garage,” Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, June 16, 1924. See also Seattle Department of Neighborhoods historical sites inventory for 423 Fairview Avenue (aka 413 Fairview), dated June 4, 2005, which notes the architectural similarities of this building with Voorhees’ later Troy Laundry building of 1927, and also states that the first occupant was the Granville Company. 69 “$15,000 building for Westlake auto structure,” Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, November 26, 1924, p.1. 70 “Plans half million dollar building for Terry Avenue,” Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, June 9, 1924, p.1; and “$200,000 lease signed by Sherman, Clay Co.,” The Seattle Times, November 2, 1924, p.21. 71 “$500,000 Investment,” The Seattle Times, April 26, 1925, p. 22. 72 Thomas Street History Services, “Lloyd Building Nomination Report,” Seattle landmark nomination, Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, p. 3. 73 “10-Story Building Is Next Project In Times Square Area,” The Seattle Times, January 12, 1926, p. 1
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1940s, and maintained his architecture licensure with Washington State until 1945, his business activity likely slowed.74 In 1958 he left Seattle for Santa Barbara, California, where he lived in retirement until his death in 1970 at age 94.75
E. The engineer, Henry W. Bittman
Signatures on original drawings on file indicate that the engineer for the subject building was Henry W. Bittman, a well known architect and skilled engineer in Seattle during the first half of the twentieth century, although at the time of the subejct building’s design and construction, he was not yet a licensed architect.76 He was a prolific designer, with many well-known downtown Seattle buildings to his credit.
Bittman was born in 1882 and grew up in Greenpoint, a suburb of New York City. His father was a prosperous and prominent interior designer, and Henry attended Cooper Union in New York City to study engineering. After leaving New York, he briefly worked in Chicago as a bridge engineer.
In 1906, Bittman moved to Seattle, and praticed for a year with architect William Kingsley. By 1908, Bittman had established his own structural engineering practice, and specialized in the design of structural steel skeletons for Seattle’s rapidly expanding urban core. From 1914 to 1919, he was also the representative for the Puget Sound & Alaska Powder Company, an explosives supplier.
A complete list of Bittman’s work was not discovered for this report. However, a review of news articles from 1918 to 1922 provides information about other projects by Bittman during the time that the subject building was constructed. Although practicing as an engineer and not yet licensed as an architect, he appears to have been designing with a considerable level of skill. A few projects were automobile-related, and some were located in the “Auto Row” area. Works found include: [See photos of Bittman’s work during this period, pp. 60-61] • Chanslor & Lyon Building (1919) at Twelfth and Madison. This building is triangular in plan, and was described as reinforced concrete construction, three stories in height with a mezzanine, at a construction cost of $60,000. Chanslor & Lyon was an automotive accessories dealer. The building was later occupied by Bekins Moving and Storage, was recently altered by the addition of a fourth floor, and is today known as Trace Lofts.77 • Stewart Motor Car Company Building (1919), 1520 Thirteenth Avenue, between Pike and Pine, for W.H. Cleaver of Everett. Stewart Motor Cars was the Washington State agency for the Pilot Motor Car Company. The building was described as two stories, constructed of pressed brick, and measuring 90 by 120 feet. The building appears to be intact today, although currently unoccupied. 78 • A four-story brick and terracotta building on Fourth Avenue, near Bell Street (1920). The building was to be leased for a minimum of five years to the State of Washington, and was to be occupied by branch offices of the Fisheries Commissioner, the State Health Department, the Automobile Licensing Department, Secretary of State’s Office, Mine Inspector, Insurance Commissioner, Bank Examiner, and several others. The building was to feature reception rooms for the use of the governor and a small auditorium for public hearings. The structure was to be built by Hans Pederson and was expected to cost $100,000, but it is not clear if this building was actually constructed. 79 • Grunbaum Brothers Furniture Company (1921) on the west side of Sixth Avenue, near Pine Street. This highly ornate four-story building was described as steel and concrete construction, measuring 120 feet deep with 180 feet of street frontage. The building features large three-part windows and is clad in terracotta and tile. The estimated cost at the time of construction was $350,000. Today, the building is known as the Decatur Building and is a designated Seattle landmark.80
74 Glickstein, p. 5. 75 Glickstein, p. 5; and “Victor Voorhees,” obituary, The Santa Barbara News-Press, August 11, 1970, p.B-8. 76 Information about Bittman derived primarily from Provost, Caterina, “Henry W. Bittman,” in Ochsner, pp.192-197. 77 “Plan construction at once of concrete building,” The Seattle Times, July 20, 1919, p. 18. 78 “New street will be added to auto district of city,” The Seattle Times, December 12, 1919, Real Estate News page. 79 “For state offices,” The Seattle Times, November 12, 1920, p. 11. 80 “New store will rise,” The Seattle Times, May 8, 1921, p. 21.
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• Mack Truck Building (1921) at the northwest corner of Ninth and Roy, near Westlake. The structure was owned by Clarence Bagley and leased to the Mack Truck Company, to serve as its general local branch. The 251 by 117 foot, one-story brick building included salesrooms, offices, assembly work, service rooms, and warehouse space. The service portion of the building was designed to accommodate the repair of seven trucks at once, with seven driveways for each stall. Today the buiding is occupied by the Buca de Beppo restaurant, and a Ducati motorcycle shop.81
In 1923, Bittman was licensed in Washington State and operated his architecture and engineering practice for over four decades. With his background expertise in structural design, many of Bittman’s best-known buildings are highrises, including the eleven-story Terminal Sales Building (1923) at First and Virginia, the seven-story Eagles Temple (1924-25, altered) at Seventh and Union, and the United Shopping Tower / Olympic Tower (1928-31) at Third and Pike. Notably, all of these buildings are very ornate, well detailed, and represent a variety of design modes, from Commercial Gothic Revival to Art Deco. Bittman designed a wide variety of building types, including commercial store and loft blocks, industrial buildings, hotels, civic buildings, and theaters, mostly in the Seattle area. During the 1920s and 1930s, Bittman was a regular architect for the Clise family, a major landholder at the north end of downtown Seattle.
Other well-known Bittman designs include the elegant and restrained Monte Cristo Hotel in Everett (1924-25); the Mann Building (1926) at Third and Union, today the home of the Wild Ginger restaurant, and a designated Seattle landmark; the exuberant Music Box Theater (1928, destroyed); and the Volker Building (1928), located at Terry and Lenora, and now owned by the Cornish College of the Arts.
By the 1930s and 1940s, Bittman designed in the popular Moderne style and the International Style. One of his last major commissions was as associate architect and resident engineer for the new Seattle Post-Intelligencer Building (Lockwood & Greene of New York City, 1947, altered), located at Sixth and Wall, and later occupied by Group Health for many years. Bittman practiced until his death, in 1953 in Seattle.
Although Henry Bittman was the consulting engineer for the architect Victor Voorhees in 1920 on the subject building of this report, no evidence could be found that they worked together again (although both were so prolific that it is certainly possible that they did, over the course of their careers). However, Bittman did design additions in 1944 and 1946 to the Troy Laundry at 311 Fairview Avenue N., which Voorhees had originally designed in 1927.
81 “New building planned,” The Seattle Times, November 10, 1921, p. 10.
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V. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bagley, Clarence. History of Seattle from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, Vol. 2. 1916,
Berner, Richard C. Seattle 1900-1920: From Boomtown, Urban Turbulence, to Restoration. Seattle: Charles Press, 1991.
BOLA Architecture + Planning, “1205 East Pine Street,” Seattle Landmark Nomination, June 2007.
City of Seattle: • Department of Neighborhoods, Historic Resources Survey database, www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/preservation/historicresources • Department of Planning and Development, Microfilm Library, permit records and drawings. • Department Of Planning and Development Parcel Data, 2010. www.seattle.gov.
D.A. Sanborn. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Seattle, Washington (various dates) maps accessed from Seattle Public Libraries, online. www.spl.org.
HistoryLink, the Online Encyclopedia to Washington State History. www.historylink.org.
King County Assessor’s Records, at Puget Sound Regional Archives, at Bellevue Community College, Bellevue, WA.
King County Parcel Viewer website. www.metrokc.gov/gis/mapportal/PViewer_main.
Kroll Map Company Inc., "Kroll Map of Seattle," various dates.
Nyberg, Folke, and Victor Steinbrueck, for the Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority. “Capitol Hill: An Inventory of Buildings and Urban Design Resources.” Seattle: Historic Seattle, 1975.
Nyberg, Folke, and Victor Steinbrueck, for the Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority. “First Hill: An Inventory of Buildings and Urban Design Resources.” Seattle: Historic Seattle, 1975.
Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl, ed. Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994.
Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl, and Dennis Alan Andersen. Distant Corner: Seattle Architects and the Legacy of HH Richardson. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003.
R.L. Polk and Company. Polk’s Directory to the City of Seattle. Seattle: various dates.
Rosenberg, Casey. Streetcar Suburb: Architectural Roots of a Seattle Neighborhood. Seattle, WA: Fanlight Press, 1989.
The Seattle Times newspaper. Seattle, Washington. Includes previous incarnations as The Seattle Press Times, The Seattle Daily Times, and The Seattle Sunday Times.
Sheridan, Mimi. “Historic Property Survey Report: Seattle’s Commercial Districts.” City of Seattle, Department of Neighborhoods, 2002.
Veka, Clay H. “Seattle’s Street Railway System and the Urban Form: Lessons from the Madison Street Cable Car.” Unpublished paper, University of Washington, March 14, 2007.
Washington State Division of Archives and Record Management. Historic Photo and Assessor Documentation.
Williams, Jacqueline. "A New Seattle Neighborhood, Courtesy of J. A. Moore." Columbia Magazine, Spring 2002, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 30-35.
Nicholson Kovalchick Architects – Great Western Motors Building Seattle Landmark Nomination – July 24, 2013 25
Williams, Jacqueline. The Hill With A Future: Seattle's Capitol Hill, 1900-1946. Seattle: CPK Ink, 2001.
Woodbridge, Sally, and Roger Montgomery. A Guide to Architecture in Washington State. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980.
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VI. PREPARER AND REVIEWER INFORMATION
Submitted & Prepared by: Nicholson Kovalchick Architects 310 First Avenue S., Suite 4-S Seattle WA 98104 Phone: 206-933-1150
Contact: David Peterson Email: [email protected] Direct: 206-494-9791
Date:
Reviewed by:
Date:
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VII. REPORT ILLUSTRATIONS
A. CURRENT MAPS, CONTEXT, AND IMAGES OF THE BUILDING
Site map; red box indicates location of site. North is up. (Google Maps, 2013)
Neighborhood context: Subject parcel located by the red box. North is up. (2013, Google Maps)
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Neighborhood context: View east on E. Union Street. Subject parcel indicated by arrow.
Neighborhood context: View south on Broadway from E. Pike Street. Subject parcel indicated by arrow.
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The building in 2013
North elevation (Union) in 2013. Compare masonry piers and window sizes to 1937 and 1964 photos (pp. 40-41); truncated piers are not original, nor are storefront windows below the transoms, except for the storefront entry visible at left. All transoms this elevation appear to be original.
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West elevation (Broadway) in 2013. This elevation appears to remain highly intact; only the storefront windows below the transoms of the leftmost two bays are not original. Exterior trusses are just visible above the parapet, on the right.
West elevation (Broadway) in 2013. This elevation appears to remain highly intact.
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East elevation (left) in 2013, facing Broadway Court. Garage doors at left lead into warehouse space in southern portion of building. Garage doors are non-original.
Interior of south portion of building, looking west
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Interior of south portion of building, looking east
Interior of south portion of building, looking east. Note ceiling of 2x6 inch boards “laminated” on end.
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Interior of north portion of building, facing west. The freestanding metal stud wall is a recent construction.
Interior of north portion of building, facing west. Note shoring posts supporting failing roof beam.
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Detail, parapet (at left), along west elevation. Adjacent building at right.
Entry, north elevation, in 2013. This entry appears to be original.
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B. HISTORIC MAPS, CONTEXT, AND IMAGES OF THE BUILDING
Detail of an 1899 map of the site, showing original street names and configuration (Seattle Municipal Archives #1553)
1912 Baist map, Plates 4 and 7 (stitched together), with the subject site located by the red dotted box. Visible are the Academy of Holy Names (labeled as “St. Joseph’s Academy”) and the Broadway Building on the subject block, the future Seattle University Garrand Building (labeled as “Catholic School”) in block 142, First Baptist Church and Minor Hospital in block 136, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church at block 139, Broadway Livery and Sale Stables just north of the subject site, and the Burke Mansion at block 135. The triangular site marked “Vac” at Broadway and Harvard is the future location of the Scottish Rite Cathedral.
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1893 Sanborn fire insurance map; the Garrand Building of Seattle University is visible in block 149.
1905 Sanborn fire insurance map; the Academy of the Holy Names is visible just south of the subject site in block 136.
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1951 Sanborn fire insurance map
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Great Western Motors location at Boylston and Pike, home of Great Western Motors from 1917-19. See also image below, at lower right. (From The Seattle Times, June 17, 1917)
The three locations of Great Western Motors in Seattle: At lower left, the Tyson Building storefront at 903 E. Pike, where the firm started in 1916; at lower right, the purpose-built structure at Boylston and E. Pine was their home from 1917-19, and top image, the subject building, was their location beginning in 1920. (Image from the Seattle Times, February 8, 1920)
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The showroom of the subject building decorated for their open house, from a featured photo in The Seattle times titled “Automobiles Exhibited by Great Western Motors”, October 17, 1920, p.6.
(Left) Edward F. Sweeney, from An Illustrated History of the State of Washington by Rev. H.K. Hines; and (Right) George M. Price (2nd from left, back row) at a meeting of Paige Dealers, from The Seattle Times, Jan.11, 1920, p.7.
The Savoy Hotel was constructed by E. F. Sweeney in 1906 (left), with four additional stories added by him in 1907 (right). Sweeney operated the hotel until he sold it in 1911. (Left image is part of an advertisement from a 1906 Post- Intelligencer newspaper, from www.pauldorpat.com; and at right is a period postcard from www.cardcow.com)
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(Left) A 1920 Paige Larchmont from Great Western Motors (UW Special Collections TRA0136); and (Right) Frederick O. Paige, from the Richard Paige collection and Harry M. Jewett (from The Horseless Age Magazine, March 1, 1917).
(Left) An early advertisement for Paige automobiles (The Seattle Times, August 27, 1916, p.3); (Right) A later advertisement for the new Jewett line (The Seattle Times, September 3, 1922, p.20).
(Left) The used car department for Great Western Motors, located in an unidentified building on 10th Avenue, “just around the corner” from the subject building of this report. (Image from The Seattle Times, July 16, 1922, p.27).
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The subject building as a sales office for General Motors Truck Company, from The Seattle Times, Sept. 30, 1923, p.7.
The building in 1937 (tax assessor photo), view from northwest. Note location of masonry piers, window sizes, and shaped parapet.
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View eastward on Union, from the corner of Harvard Avenue, in 1960. Subject building at center left of image, indicated by arrow; note shaped parapet is still intact. (Seattle Municipal Archives #7685)
The building in 1964 (tax assessor photo), view from northwest. Compare masonry piers and window sizes to 1937 photo; additional, non-load-bearing piers have been added. Transoms appear to have been simply covered, rather than removed.
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The building in 2002 (tax assessor photo)
Historic context: The neighborhood in 1905. The image is a view eastward from the roof of the newly-built Broadway Building (see image in following page) at Broadway and Madison; the latter street is visible at the upper right. The wooden fence with widely spaced posts at lower center left is located along the north side of Union Street, which intersects with Madison at far right. The subject site would have been out of the frame, a few buildings to the left. (Photo by Asahel Curtis, UW Special Collections, CUR283).
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Historic context: The Burke mansion at Madison and Boylston, c.1880s. (www.pauldorpat.com)
Historic context: (Left and right) Academy of the Holy Names, adjacent to subject site, later known as St. Joseph’s Academy, and others. Another Catholic institution in existence at the same time, known as the Academy of Holy Names, was located downtown at 7th and Jackson. (Advertisement from The Catholic Progress newspaper, October 14, 1904, p.5, and photo by Asahel Curtis, UW Special Collections, CUR562).
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Historic context: View of the Parish and School of the Immaculate Conception (John Parkinson, 1894) at Madison Street and Broadway Avenue, one block south of the subject site, ca.1906. This was the first building of the future Seattle University campus. Today slightly altered, it is known as the Garrand Building at SU. (UW Special Collections, photo by Asahel Curtis, CUR189).
Historic context: Broadway Building at the northeast corner of Broadway and Madison, in 1905. The subject site is just down the street to the left; at that time, the site was occupied by two houses. (Museum of History and Industry, PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, 1983.10.7370.1)
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Historic context: St. Mark’s Church, at Harvard between Union and Broadway, in 1906. In a few years, the Scottish Rite Cathedral would be built directly to the right of this building. (UW Special Collections, PSE095)
Historic context: Laying of the cornerstone of First Baptist Church, in 1910, showing nearby housing on Union at Harvard. (www.seattlefirstbaptist.org)
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Historic context: First Baptist Church in 2013. (www.seattlefirstbaptist.org)
Historic context: Broadway Livery and Sale Stables, at Union and 10th, in1910. (UW Special Collections LEE124)
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Historic context: Old Fire Station #25, in 1924, at Harvard and Union. (Seattle Municipal Archives #2686)
Historic context: Scottish Rite Cathedral at Broadway and Harvard, around 1912. St. Mark’s Church (see photo previous page) was, at the time, located directly behind this building; the subject site would be just behind the Scottish Rite Cathedral, at lower right, across the street, although the subject building is yet unbuilt at the time of this photo. (UW Special Collections, photo by Asahel Curtis, CUR912).
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Historic context: Minor Hospital (built 1910), now part of First Baptist Church, at Spring and Harvard. (Left image from MOHAI, Seattle Historical Society Collection SHS221; right image is tax assessor photo, 2011).
Historic context: The neighborhood in 1920. View from 12th and Madison (the latter indicated by the streetcar tracks); the steeple is First Baptist Church at Harvard and Union. The subject site is not visible, but approximately behind the buildings at the center right of the image.
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Examples of other Auto Row automobile dealerships: Automobile dealerships were frequently ornate and in prominent locations. (Top left) Packard dealership (Charles Haynes, 1911) at 12th & Pike in 1937, by then no longer a dealership; (top right) another Packard dealership (Louis Svarz, 1920) at Pike & Melrose; (center) the Tyson Building, which housed many dealerships over time, and was the first location of Great Western Motors (Charles Haynes, 1912); (Lower left and right) The Lieback Garage Building, which housed the Seattle Automobile Sales Company, shown in 2012 and 1918. (All images tax assessor photos, except lower right, from University of Oregon Archives #pna-21656).
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C. OTHER WORK BY THE ARCHITECT, VICTOR VOORHEES
Other work by the architect Victor Voorhees – Typical home design from his c.1907-11 book, Western Home Builder.
Other automobile-related work by the architect Victor Voorhees – 1424 E. Broadway (1912), garage constructed for C. C. Roe. This may have been Voorhees' first automobile-related building that he designed. (Department of Neighborhoods photo, 2010)
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Other automobile-related work by the architect Victor Voorhees – Automobile dealership building for L. S. Roe, at the northwest corner of 12th and Union, built in 1912; this partial view is 1920. Constructed as one story, the building was originally intended to eventually be three stories in height. The building is today considerably altered, remains only one story, and is occupied by a Ferrari automobile showroom. (Seattle Municipal Archives #12839, detail)
Other automobile-related work by the architect Victor Voorhees – 915 E. Pike Street (1912), which housed several dealerships over time, including Chevrolet, Graham, and REO. Visible at right is the Tyson Building, at the corner of Pike and Broadway at 905 E. Pike Street (Charles Haynes, 1912). (Department of Neighborhoods photo, 2010)
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Other automobile-related work by the architect Victor Voorhees – The Overland automobile agency at 11th and Pike, first two stories built by Voorhees in 1913; the upper two stories were added by Voorhees in 1915. This view dates from 1945; today the building is known as the Monique Lofts condominiums. (UW Special Collections SEA2472).
Other automobile-related work by the architect Victor Voorhees – 1110 E. Pike (1916), first occupied by Goodrich Tire Service (Department of Neighborhoods photo, 2010)
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Other automobile-related work by the architect Victor Voorhees – 700 S. Jackson Street (1916) in the International District. The building still houses automotive-related uses. (Google Maps Streetview, 2012, www.google.com)
Other automobile-related work by the architect Victor Voorhees – (Two images above) 1132 Broadway Court, built in 1917, half a block south of the subject building. (Above, Tax assessor photo, showing view in 1937, and below, 2012 view from Google Maps Streetview at www.google.com)
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Other automobile-related work by the architect Victor Voorhees – Great Western Motors at Boylston and Pine (1917), occupied by that firm 1917-1919, prior to moving to the subject building of this report. Like the subject building, this structure was also built by owner E. F. Sweeney specifically for Great Western Motors. (Department of Neighborhoods photo, 2001)
Other work by the architect Victor Voorhees – Washington Arms Apartments (1919) at 1065 E. Prospect Street, near Volunteer Park. (Department of Neighborhoods photo)
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Other work by the architect Victor Voorhees – Knights of Pythias Building (1920) at 1929 3rd Avenue, in downtown Seattle between Virginia and Stewart Streets; today known as the Heiden Building. (Department of Neighborhoods photo, 2012)
Other work by the architect Victor Voorhees – Seattle Gun Club clubhouse at Fort Lawton (1920, probably unbuilt). (Image from The Seattle Times, March 14, 1920, p.3).
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Other work by the architect Victor Voorhees – Two views of the neighborhood commercial building at 1400 34th Street (1924) in Madrona. The right photo is the garage portion of the building; it is visible at the far right of the left photo. The garage portion served as parking for the storefront shops visible at left. (Tax assessor photos, 2003)
Other automobile-related work by the architect Victor Voorhees – 321 Westlake Avenue (1924, demolished), view in 1937. Originally occupied by Howell Thompson Motor Company, distributor of Star automobiles, this may have been Voorhees’ last building directly related to automobile sales or service. (Tax assessor photo)
Other work by the architect Victor Voorhees – 1925 renovation for the Vance Company of the Seattle Engineering School (1918) into apartments. Today the building is the Marqueen Hotel at Queen Anne Avenue and Mercer Street.
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Other work by the architect Victor Voorhees – (Top left and right) The Vance Hotel (1926) and Lloyd Building (1926) both at 6th and Stewart, and (Lower left) the Joseph Vance Building (1929-30) at 3rd and Union in downtown Seattle. (Color images from Seattle Department of Neighborhoods; upper left image from UW Special Collections SEA1227). (Lower right) Photo of architect Victor Voorhees (Image from Seattle Times, January 3, 1926, p.31)
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D. OTHER WORK BY THE ENGINEER, HENRY W. BITTMAN
Henry Bittman: Chanslor & Lyon Building (1919) at Twelfth and Madison. (Department of Neighborhoods photo)
Henry Bittman: Stewart Motor Car Company Building (1919), 1520 Thirteenth Avenue (Tax assessor photo)
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Henry Bittman: Grunbaum Brothers Furniture Company (1921) Sixth Avenue, near Pine Street. (Photo by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia)
Henry Bittman: Mack Truck Building (1921) at Ninth and Roy (Google Maps Streetview, www.google.com)
Troy Laundry (Victor Voorhees 1927, with additions by Henry Bittman in 1944 and 1946) (Photo by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia)
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APPENDIX A: GRAPHIC SUMMARY OF PRIMARY ALTERATIONS TO ELEVATIONS
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