A $2.75 million mansion built in 1919 is bound to have a notable pedigree and this E. Galer home that just went on the market yesterday is not exception. Here’s what Seattle Dream Homes  (a CHS advertiser) had to say about the Tudor-Jacobethan style home:

Photo: Department of Neighborhoods

The former Bullitt Mansion is on the market. It used to belong to Dorothy Bullitt, who owned KING-TV and helped to found many of the city’s most significant institutions, including Children’s Hospital, the Seattle Symphony, and Cornish School of the Arts.

You read more about Dorothy’s rather incredible life in this HistoryLink.org article.

As for the real estate end of things, the home last sold in August 2006 for $2.4 million. The current owners are looking for around a 15% increase in a time when most Hill homes have seen their prices fall. While Seattle median home prices rose for the first time in two years in January, on Capitol Hill prices continued to fall.

In data from the NWMLS provided to us by our news partners at the Seattle Times, the area including Capitol Hill and Madison Park fell nearly 1% vs January 2009. It’s not as bad as in the suburbs as prices on the Eastside were down around 6.5%.

Then again, the old mansion is definitely an exception. Here’s the write-up on it from the Department of Neighborhood’s Historical Site profile for the 1014 E. Galer property:

Historic Name:	Bullitt, Dorothy Stimson, House	Common Name:
Style:	Tudor – Jacobethan	Neighborhood:	Capitol Hill
Built By:		Year Built:	1919
Significance In the opinion of the survey, this property appears to meet the criteria of the National Register of Historic Places. In the opinion of the survey, this property appears to meet the criteria of the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. In the opinion of the survey, this property is located in a potential historic districe (National and/or local). This large house was designed in 1919 by David Myers, shortly before he formalized his partnership with James Schack and Arrigo Young. His client was Perry Truax, a vice-president of Seattle First National Bank, and his wife Mabel, who lived here for many years. In the 1940s it was owned by Wallace M. Hibbard, vice-president of the College Club, and Arthur Forsyth of Seattle First National Bank. However, the home’s primary owner was Mrs. Dorothy Stimson Bullitt, who bought the house in 1948 and lived here for more than forty years until her death in 1989. Mrs. Bullitt was one of the Northwest’s most significant business leaders of the mid-20th century. Born in 1892 to one of the region’s most important lumber barons, C. D. Stimson and his wife Harriet, she married Scott Bullitt, from a prominent Kentucky family, in 1918. Upon the death of her father, her brother and her husband, all during the depression of the early 1930s, she inherited management of several downtown properties. She took on the business herself, working until the properties were once again stable. Her greatest impact, however, began with the purchase of a radio station in 1947. Two years later she acquired Seattle’s first television station. From this beginning she built King Broadcasting, which covered the Pacific Northwest with pioneering local entertainment productions and nationally-recognized news coverage. . David Myers had come to Seattle from Glasgow in 1889 and worked for several local firms before leaving to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of technology. He returned in 1905 to work with John Graham, Sr., where he was the principal designer until 1910. He then opened his own practice, becoming well known for residential, civic and religious work, as well as his work on the Bogue Commission plan for a new civic center; he was also one the faculty of the University of Washington from 1917 to 1920. During this period he shared office space with James Schack, and in 1920 they formed a partnership with engineer Arrigo Young. This became one of the city’s most prominent firms, designing the Seattle Civic Auditorium complex, the town of Longview and numerous residences and commercial buildings. In 1929 Myers left the firm (which remained in existence until the 1990s), and returned to private practice until his death in 1936. This section of Federal Avenue is a tree-lined avenue with a fine collection of large homes, many designed by prominent architects for some of Seattle’s leading families. The street was well located for development, as it is only one block from the Broadway/10th Avenue streetcar line and abuts the open spaces of Volunteer Park and Lake View Cemetery to the east. Although the southern two blocks were platted as part of the 1883 Phinney’s Addition, little development occurred until the first decade of the 20th century, about the time that Volunteer Park was redesigned by the Olmsted Brothers.
Appearance This 2-1/2 story house has numerous characteristics of the Jacobean style, including brick cladding, a steep side-gable roof with gabled wings and extensive cast stone and stucco trim on the first story and around all the windows. The entry, in a gabled wing toward the center, has a Gothic arch, with three casement windows above. To the east is gabled bay with a wide three-sided two-story flat-roofed bay with five large six-over-nine windows on each floor. A pair of six-light casement windows are in the gable end. Toward the west end of the façade is a similar gabled bay, but smaller and without the projecting; each floor ahs a trio of large multipane windows. At the west end is a two-story enclosed porch. The east elevation has a very decorative Tudor-style brick chimney with four chimney pots and a small window in the center at the second floor level. The formal landscaping includes clipped hedge above a low brick wall, with shrubs and small trees around the lawn.

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