(Image: University of Washington: Special Collections)

There’s a triangle where Broadway and Harvard meet just north of Madison that has been fenced for years. The last time we wrote about it in 2010, the lot was fenced and full of weeds. Fourteen years later, the lot is still fenced and still full of weeds.

Behind the fence is a concrete stairway with a railing — but whatever building it led to is no longer there. It’s a stairway to nowhere.

How could a patch of land along a street like Broadway remain so unused?

We know what happened tot he building.

This was the old Scottish Rite Cathedral, which opened in 1911 and remained in use by the Scottish Rite until the late 1950s. The building was actually built in the old Spring right-of-way which was vacated by the city in March of 1891, long before the Masonic Temple Association bought the land in August of 1910.

Flash forward 114 years and find a fenced empty lot full of surprisingly hearty weeds and an ambitious clutch of trees. The Polyclinic, the owner of this strange patch of Capitol Hill, has been ambitious with the rest of its properties. But this lot is a conundrum.

The building that used to stand there was designed and built by builder Frank Allen. It was a two-story frame building over a full story concrete basement floor. The entrance faced south, toward Madison but the easiest access was from Harvard and you can still see that from the sidewalk.

The photograph at the top of this story by Asahel Curtis dated 1912 shows the building from Harvard Ave so that one can see the pillars and the double eagle that is the symbol of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

When it was built, the Scottish Rite Cathedral was across Broadway from Christensen’s Dance School (now the Silver Cloud Hotel), across Harvard from Minor Hospital (now Whole Foods stands there), and next door to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (now moved to St. Mark’s Cathedral at 1245 10th Avenue E.).

The Scottish Rite folks built a new center up north on Broadway in about 1960 at 1155 Broadway E, but that building too has been demolished. The Scottish Rite group left our neighborhood, but they still exist, as do many other groups of freemasons.

A decade ago, the Polyclinic toyed with ideas for the space including creating a plaza or a park but nothing came of the ideas.

Back in June 2009 when the City Council passed legislation making it possible for Polyclinic to develop its E Union land for a medical facility, Betsy Hunter of Capitol Hill Housing (now Community Roots Housing) told CHS about her hopes that the Polyclinic would think creatively about the space. “That strange shaped lot could be landscaped with a staircase to bring pedestrians up to First Hill,” Hunter said. “A plaza could be created across from Seattle University with a pedestrian area to walk though a landscaped courtyard before entering the new building with parking for the church and the Polyclinic, retail, offices and housing. All of it could happen with partnerships and the rezone.”

More than a decade later, the land remains unused except by blackberries, birds, and rats.

Back before it became an empty space and after the Scottish Rite Masons moved up Broadway, the building that called the lot home was renovated and became “Music-Go-Round,” a venture by emerging theater folks and UW graduates Jerry Sando and William J Dore Jr. both of whom lived on Capitol Hill at the time. The theater opened on October 31, 1961 with “Can Can” and continued to offer musical theater until they ran out of money and closed in February 1962. Both Sando and Dore went on to long careers in theater — Sando was perhaps best known as “Bozo” the clown on KING-TV and Dore taught drama for decades at Seattle University. The theater never reopened.

In the very late 1970s the building became Stop & Shop on Broadway, an antique store. Then in the mid-1980s, Club Broadway began at 1111 Broadway. While this is not the 1115 address that was being used at the time for the old Scottish Rite Temple building, it is consistent with its location and a music wiring chart on line for the club certainly looks like the shape of the old building. John H. Schloredt is listed as “president” of the club in the street directory for 1985. The Club lasted until about 1988. And then it went vacant again before everything — except the staircase — was torn down and trucked away.

Dotty DeCoster, remembered as a Seattle historian, writer, and a regular contributor to CHS, contributed to the original report on this parcel. Maybe someday the land will be home to a park to honor her.

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