A 103-year-old 10th Ave E home will join the list of Capitol Hill properties being considered for Seattle landmarks protections laster this month. Meanwhile, the 111-year-old Gaslight Inn will move to the next step in its quest for landmark status this week.
The 1220 10th Ave E J.W. Bullock Residence will be considered by the board later this month. You can send your comment on the nomination to the landmarks board via email or plan to attend the hearing on the house:
Landmarks Preservation Board to consider nomination for the Bullock Residence in Capitol Hill for landmark status
September 10, 2015 (Seattle, WA) – Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board will consider nomination of the Bullock Residence (1220 10th Avenue E) on Wednesday, October 21 at 3:30 p.m. in the Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 5th Avenue, 40th Floor (Room 4060).The public is invited to attend the meeting and make comments. Written comments should be received by the Landmarks Preservation Board at the following address by October 20 at 3:00 p.m.:
Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board
Seattle Department of Neighborhoods
PO Box 94649
Seattle, WA 98124-4649 (mailing address)
The property has been owned for more than 20 years by an executive at the Gates Foundation and a writer. There are no current permits for construction and it does not appear the property is currently for sale.
The J. W. Bullock residence “appears to have been one of the earliest residences to be constructed in the Phinney’s Addition along Tenth Avenue N. to the north of Highland Drive,” the nomination proposal for the property reads. “Prior residential development on Block G appears to have been limited due to the lack of street improvements and the issues related to passage through the Leary-Ferry Estate.”
Bullock, as with many of those who created Seattle’s grandest homes, was in the mining business and a one-time city council member:
In later life he stated that he was involved with “general merchandizing” and came to Seattle in 1895 at the age of 27. He became active in the latter stages of the Cassiar Gold Rush in interior Alaska where he operated a clothing store in Wrangell, Alaska. After which he joined Klondike prospecting activity on the Yukon River and traveled between Seattle and Alaska. He appears to be the ‘J.W. Bullock’ who was on board a ship (S.S. Robert Dollar) that was returning to Seattle at the time of the 1900 U.S. Census and who listed Seattle as his home address. He also appears to have returned from Alaska to Seattle again on August 17, 1902 aboard the Pacific Coast Company “Cottage City” and was among dozens of passengers said to be carrying $50,000 in Klondike treasure. By 1902 he was listed in the Seattle Polk’s Directory as president of the Mutual Gold Mining Union and resided at 425 Spring Street.
He created a lovely old house:
As designed and constructed by L.O. Menard for Mr. and Mrs. Bullock the new house exhibited highly distinctive exterior features indicative of Mr. Menard’s skills and the influence of both the Colonial Revival design mode and the popular American Four Square house type. The design featured a prominent hipped roof form accentuated by hipped dormers and 36” wide bracketed soffits along with brick cladding with Georgian- inspired brick quoins and dentil brick details. Its highly stylistic character was further embellished by a full width porch, ornate windows and an elaborate wooden rooftop balustrade at the second floor balcony that extended above the entrance porch and the conservatory wing. The formal first floor spaces included a reception hall with a complex main stairwell that opened to a living room and a large dining room separated by tall wing walls – creating an organic flowing space indicative of the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright and Prairie School.
But not everything was happy with the couple who built the home:
J.W. and Lavina Bullock were divorced in 1922 after an acrimonious and lengthy legal proceeding during which Mrs. Bullock’ attorney alleged that Mr. Bullock was concealing his full assets, particularly his interests in Seattle First National Bank. While he retained ownership of the residence at 1220 Tenth Avenue N., he resided at the Arctic Club after the divorce. After the divorce, he appears to have purchased Walldale Farm which was located three miles west of Fall City. [This extensive dairy farm complex was partially built in 1919 – possibly for Wallace Duthie (Bullock’s business partner J.F. Duthie’s son) – and became well-known as Aldarra Farm after it was purchased from Bullock’s estate by William Boeing, Sr. in 1942.]
Despite the rocky end to the marriage, the house has survived the decades mostly intact and might just have a chance at landmark status. The full nomination document is below.
UPDATE: The home’s owner Valerie Tarico has said more about her hopes for the nomination in the CHS comments:
We are doing this to keep the house from being torn down and replaced with cement-board skilnnies when we finally sell it. That is what’s happening to old houses like ours that are on arterials. Please, if you enjoy driving past this house and others like it contact the board through the link in this article and let them know you support the nomination. Thanks!
Meanwhile, Wednesday brings the official nomination meeting for the Gaslight Inn house on 15th Ave that has been home to the B&B for decades after a loving renovation. In August, the board voted unanimously to consider the house as a landmark citing longtime owner Stephen Bennett’s efforts to make it a haven for members of the gay community during the 1980s AIDS epidemic and calling the house “a very important part of our cultural history.”
The Gaslight nomination will be considered Wednesday, October 7th. Send and email of support if you can’t make it.
Landmarks Preservation Board Meeting ** Seattle City Hall ** ** 600 4 th Avenue, Bertha Knight Landes Room (on main lobby level) ** Wednesday, October 7, 2015 – 3:30 p.m.
If these are landmarks, so should ours and most of our block. 110 years old and going strong.
I think there is a way to apply for historic status for the whole block — to keep them from getting torn down.
We are doing this to keep the house from being torn down and replaced with cement-board skilnnies when we finally sell it. That is what’s happening to old houses like ours that are on arterials. Please, if you enjoy driving past this house and others like it contact the board through the link in this article and let them know you support the nomination. Thanks!
Amazing. Drive by NIMBYism.
Gotta preserve the view of pretty homes from my car, so I must prevent new homes from being built in one of the rare corridors where the zoning exists to do so.
Make no mistake, this does nothing to lessen the housing crisis, and the housing preserved in this case is neither affordable nor actually of any real historic meaning.
Historic preservation does nothing to restrict creative use of heritage buildings. We currently have three small families living in our house. Others of similar size and substance have been formally turned into condos. When historic preservation is part of the equation, then builders are forced to get creative with buildings that have durable appeal rather than simply creating disposable buildings that become a waste disposal problem for future generations.
1) How many rooms? How small are the families? Its likely a lot more families could fit in new housing if built, especially if the yard is sizeable.
2) Allowing multiple families live here is highly dependant on the owner. The next owner could just have the whole house for one family. Multiple homes here commits to having more families here.
3) Newer homes are much more seizemically sound and energy efficient. Retrofitting is possible, but not as effective as newly built homes.
4) What makes you think the new buildings are necessary “disposable”? With care, many of these new homes can last just as long as the buildings they replaced.
What I find offensive are your assumptions that 1. anyone who cares about stewarding our architectural inheritance rather than bulldozing it is NIMBY. 2. beauty is something that matters only to rich people. (You can find evidence that this isn’t true even in the most destitute corner of the planet). 3. density is the only value we should consider because it is top on your list. And 4. you should get to judge how much square footage each person should get, even in a shared house.
If, as a housing advocate, you don’t want to estrange people who care about both affordable housing and a wide range of other issues including long-range livability of dense urban environments, you might not want to lead with insults and the assumption that anyone with a more complex set of priorities is a jerk.
To respond to your other comments, there are plenty of buildings, including on Capitol Hill, that few would dispute are better replaced. There also are ways to change zoning and regulations that encourage creative use and multi-family use of buildings that were originally designed for large single families. We don’t have to bulldoze everything to make things better. And there are some broad if fuzzy convergences in terms of which kinds of buildings represent little loss when bulldozed and where there are a wider variety of values at play.
Valerie,
My strongest reaction wasn’t to you initial drive to save this one house but the subsequent suggestion above that the whole block should be preserved. It seems to me from your statements that you think we should prevent building new townhomes or apartments anywhere there are old homes.
Am I wrong on this?
This city is full of old homes, many just as old or older as the ones on the block you were suggesting we try to have preserved.
Conversely there is very little space in the city that is zoned for higher density to allow more folks to live in the city. If we in this city then seek to historically preserve as many blocks as we can in what little space is actually zoned for higher density, we end up with even less space for new housing to address the housing shortage both now and in the future.
If a house is worth preserving, its worth moving to a different plot of land not zoned for higher density.
I too like beautiful places like our mountains, forests and food producing farm lands. Not building more housing here means more gets built out further into the suburbs, which removes more of that beautiful natural habitat while also requiring those who move further out to burn more fossil fuels to get to work and to their basic needs.
Want to preserve a few beautiful old buildings? Fine. Let’s find a way to do so that doesn’t lock up the land zoned for higher density and push even more folks further out of the city.
As you noticed later, the house in the article is currently zoned single family. But my experience is that rezoning for density doesn’t necessarily take into account the architectural or community value of the zoning pattern. Yes, much of this city is zoned single family and doesn’t allow walkable access to commercial spaces. There’s a lot that could be improved. I don’t think zoning for density in the most historic parts of the city is the way to go at things. Consider Paris, for example, which created a high density zone around L’ Defense rather than doing it on top of the city center. I might suggest that it’s a lot easier to move zoning than to move buildings.
The message I am getting from Charles B is that the owner of this house (and any others zoned multi family) need to get out and take their historic houses elsewhere so NEW people can take THEIR place. Perhaps they could build 8 townhouses on that lot like the ones to the south selling just shy of a million dollars apiece………………………….
If they tore down the Louvre or Buckingham Palace just imagine the housing that could be put in their place. Hell what do we need Volunteer Park for? 45 acres would house a LOT of people and that is all that is important apparently to the New Urbanist agenda. History be damned. Heaven forbid you own a house. Any house. Anywhere. If so you are pure evil.
You’d think that every plane landing at SeaTac is full of new residents and their belongings. And they need a place NOW! Get out Grandma!
Maximum,
Don’t misrepresent my statements. I am not calling for anyone to be kicked out of their home.
This paricular situation is about an owner wanting to permanently lock in a house in its current state and position, no matter what subsequent owners may desire.
I never once said we should tear down truly historic buildings or our parks. Not every building is historic just because its old though, and not every building you preserve need be preserved in place.
If the arcitecture matters to you, the specific location should not be as important.
There is a difference between preserving history and trying to fossilize you city. A city changes as it ages and not every building needs to be kept in place just because its old.
65% of this city is single family zoned. Why not preserve homes in that area instead of trying to grandfather in block after block of what little land that has been set aside to allow for growth?
Every part of Capitol Hill has historic gems in the form of churches, residences and early apartment buildings. The best of these should be protected from the rampant destruction we are seeing today.
The Landmarks Board does not care what a building is being used for or what it could be used for. They only take a building and based on 6 criteria determine if it is worthy of saving or not. It doesn’t matter where the building is located or what the zoning is in that location. The interior of a building is also important to them in determining if something should be designated a landmark. In this case the interiors are in wonderful original condition as is the exterior. Obviously the current owners are able to sustain the building and believe it or not landmark properties trade hands all the time with the understanding that they will be preserved.
My own house in an L3 Zone (gasp) is one of the city’s leading bed and breakfasts. It is shared with 8 strangers every night and sustains itself as well. While not as fine as the Bullock or the Gaslight it is special to me and certainly adds to the cache that developers are seeking to exploit right now. I wouldn’t want it torn down either.
I think that the Bullock house meets criterion D and E for sure and maybe B as well.
Thankfully YOU are not on the Board.
Unfortunately, our built environment has become so ugly that the remaining attractive structures are typically the old homes. Instead of tearing down beautiful old homes, growth could be focused on the parts of the city that are not very nice. Rainier and Aurora Avenues could both be lined with 20+ story apartment buildings, as most of the structures currently there are not very nice. Many parts of Rainier are on the light rail line, so the transportation is already there. Another area that could be more developed is around Northgate. There are many areas in Seattle where growth could occur.
I think that advocates for density sometimes neglect the fact that if we want density in the long run it needs to be aspirational. And in virtually every culture in human history that includes some sense of aesthetics–and plant life.
After some checking it appears this house is zoned for SF5000. No townhomes could go here reguardless of historic status.
Not going to waste any more tIme over this.
Something is wrong when the owner is trying to protect the historic property and might fail. Usually it’s the owner who wants to tear historic properties down. This is silly. The city should jump at the opportunity.