Last weekend, we featured Capitol Hill’s LaCrosse Apartments in our latest edition of CHS Schemata. Frequent CHS contributor and local historian Dotty DeCoster wrote this history of the captivating building at the corner of East Thomas and Malden just off 15th Ave E a few years back for the Capitol Hill Times. The essay doesn’t appear online so Dotty has agreed to share it here on CHS.

If you were new to Seattle in 1908, you might have been looking for housing on the northern part of Renton Hill, up near the exciting new Capitol Hill development.  You could have taken the #8 streetcar “Capitol Hill (Volunteer Park)” up to 15th Avenue N. and Thomas Street, walked a small block west to 302 Malden Avenue N, and talked to Mrs. Eliza J. Purdy, proprietor of the brand new LaCrosse Apartments about renting a pleasant apartment there.

(Image: John Feit)

Today, you can take the same trip on the #10 Capitol Hill (Volunteer Park) trackless trolley bus, get off close to the same place, and the LaCrosse Apartments will greet you with it’s distinctive tower, and three stories of lovely, spacious two-bedroom apartments.  Architects describe the building as “Mission style with a Beaux Arts influence”, neighbors note the entrance to the building has Corinthian capitals on square piers (an odd take on classicism), and all of us notice the square tower on the southwest corner a story above the roof.  The architect, Frank H. Perkins, who came to Seattle from southern California in1903 designed a number of commercial buildings in the area during his 20-year practice here.

It’s hard to know whether Mr. Perkins originated the rather fantasy-like appearance of the LaCrosse Apartments, or whether the owners asked for some of the details.  Mr. Perkins also designed the Forest Ridge Convent and School.  The plan for that structure was developed by Mother Marie Van den Abeele who took scissors and snipped up a floor plan of Barat College (Lake Forest, Illinois) to the appropriate configuration and then handed the plan to Mr. Perkins.  Forest Ridge, a four-story brick structure, opened in 1910, and stands today at 1617 Interlaken Drive E., although the Sisters of the Sacred Heart and their school have long since moved east of Lake Washington.

The tower of the LaCrosse Apartments has looked out over the 15th Avenue business district for a hundred years now.  On the south it has seen the building of a major automotive service station and repair area replaced by the building and rebuilding of the Safeway complex.  On the east it has seen the building of St. Luke’s hospital,  the building of the Group Health campus and subsequent demise of St. Luke’s.  (Portions of the old St. Luke’s building have been incorporated into the courtyard of Group Health.)   On the northeast, the Tabernacle has flourished and been replaced, most recently by The Harrison.  

To the north, along Malden Avenue East, however, much has remained the same. Malden Avenue was the original name of this short, interesting, street between E. Thomas Street and E. Roy.  It makes a lovely walk if one wants to see what a street on today’s Capitol Hill looked like a century ago.