The house in 1937
It’s not often that an “incomplete” gets you a passing grade but the more-than-100-year-old Victorian at 1523 E Madison planned to be razed to make way for a new 58-unit apartment building is just lucky, we guess. For now.
At its meeting Wednesday, Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board voted to move the nomination process forward for the property saying, basically, we need to learn more about it before we can make a decision. The determination session has not yet been scheduled.
The old house, most recently used for offices, was originally built as a residence in the 1890s and has somehow survived the years on E Madison. Today, it stands just a block east of the Bullitt Center, the “greenest commercial office building in the world.”
CHS wrote about the seemingly dim prospects for the building to achieve landmark protection earlier this week. It doesn’t seem to have a compelling historical story though we liked one tidbit passed along via Twitter about the possible use of the building as a campaign office for Cal Anderson back in the day.
The developer undertaking the landmarks process has plans for a five-story “work force housing” apartment building at the corner of 16th Ave and E Madison. Mad Flats will establish “a strong urban corner” and provide “adaptability from live/work to commercial use,” the developer Johnson Carr says.
A promising start!
Since the meeting was held mid-week when most people are working and cannot comment, I’m glad this is at least being discussed intelligently. This city is destroying its architectural heritage at an alarming rate. There is a 7-11 and parking across the street from this house. It seems like a better decision might be to simply move the house across the street, rather than erase it from Seattle’s history forever. Another alternative might be to offer it for $1 and have the buyer move it to another location. Whether the house is saved in it present location or not, it is a certainly a project worth undertaking. Once it is gone, it is gone forever and future apartment dwellers can thank us for our shortsightedness and lack of imagination.
[…] for nomination, the most recent candidate advanced to at least the nomination phase after the board decided it didn’t have enough information to deny the more than 100-year-old E Madison Victorian […]
[…] reported on the first review by the board of 1523 E Madison that ended with a call to move the old house — now offices — forward in the process to […]