Built for a Seattle Hardware Company founder, the Burwell House comes with a lot of hardware
A neighborhood of landmarks is poised to add another.
The Burwell House of Capitol Hill’s Millionaire’s Row is slated to be considered for protection of its historic features in a hearing scheduled for March.
Champions of historic preservation in Seattle might be falling over themselves to see the 1904-built 14th Ave E house designated. “It is challenging to find Arts and Crafts architecture in Seattle comparable to the Burwell House,” the report on the property compiled for the nomination hearing writes.
Situated on the southern end of the west side of Millionaire’s Row, the 6,570-square-foot house is within a few blocks of 11 properties designated for landmarks protections and the street as a whole won its listing in the National Register of Historic Places in 2022. In addition to placing the amazing old houses under a review process for any significant architectural changes to their protected elements, the programs also make the properties eligible for grants-in-aid and the historic rehabilitation tax credit—which allows owners and some lessees to take a 20% income tax credit on rehabilitation costs.
The Burwell House has been owned by Bryce and Chris Seidl since the couple purchased the property for $775,000 in 1994. According to county records, the property was transferred into a Seidl family trust last spring. The Seidls are listed as the submitting party for the nomination application.
(Image: Historic Seattle)
Belmont-Boylston ‘double house’ designation meeting
A 1901-era, three-story apartment building at 1411 Boylston Ave nominated for protections in January will move ahead with a meeting on designating the property this coming week. Possible protections for the so-called Belmont-Boylston “double house” are coming as Historic Seattle prepares to sell the property it renovated after purchasing a swath of properties in the area in 1989. You can learn more about Wednesday’s 3:30 PM landmarks board meeting (PDF) here.
101 years ago, the house was being built near what would become Volunteer Park for Anson and Gertrude Burwell. Anson helped build the Seattle Hardware Company into one of the economic engines of Seattle’s early 20th century growth. He was led the YMCA here as it grew into an influential force as Seattle boomed.
Their Craftsman style structure has survived as one of the purest remaining representations of Seattle’s grandest homes of the period.
“Situated between the Prairie and Craftsman styles, James Schack’s home for the Burwells
epitomizes Arts and Crafts ideals both inside and out and,” the report on the property reads. “Here one finds not classical columns, moldings, or details from Greek or Roman antiquity but indigenous materials used in a simple and straightforward manner, united by line and proportion, and embellished sparely with ornament largely drawn from nature.”
The house seems likely to find strong support from the landmarks board. The report notes that changes to the exterior over the years have been “modest” though it has undergone some significant interior renovations.
To be designated a landmark, the house’s nomination must be approved in March. A second designation meeting will then follow with the board considering which elements of the structure are worthy of protections. The Burwell House nomination meeting will be held March 5th:
Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board will consider the nomination of Burwell House located at 709 14th Avenue E. on Capitol Hill at its meeting on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, at 3:30 p.m. Members of the public can attend the meeting in person at the Boards & Commissions Room (L2-80) of Seattle City Hall, located at 600 4th Avenue. The meeting can also be accessed using the WebEx Event link or telephone call-in line provided in the agenda that will be posted to the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods website approximately one week prior to the meeting. At this time, many of the Board members and presenters may be participating remotely rather than in person.
The public is invited to participate in the meeting and make comments regarding the nomination. You may sign up to address the Landmarks Preservation Board for up to 2 minutes on matters on this agenda. Online sign-up will begin two hours before the 3:30 p.m. meeting start time and will end at the start of the meeting. Members of the public who wish to speak can either use the call-in number, the WebEx link, or may speak in-person at the meeting’s physical location. The agenda for this meeting will be sent approximately one week prior to the meeting, and will be posted on the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods website.
Written comments are also accepted and should be received by the Landmarks Preservation Board no later than 3:30 p.m. on March 4, 2025. Written comments can be submitted:
Via email: [email protected]
Via US Mail: Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board, Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, PO Box 94649, Seattle WA 98124-4649
A copy of the Landmark Nomination is posted on the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods website under the heading of “Current Nominations.” The nomination application will also be available through a link on the meeting agenda.
A landmark nomination provides a physical description of the building, object, or site, and information on its history, current and historic photos, site plans, maps, drawings, and more. To learn about the nomination and designation process, visit our webpage.
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The money and political will put into upholding symbols of opulence and greed is just wild to me. If only these people cared as much about the future people of Seattle as they did about the past people of Seattle…
Yep. Seattle is made up entirely of the white people in Get Out.
God save us from the white liberals.
Unironically…THIS
Actually, we do care about the future people of Seattle quite a bit. One reason to maintain landmarks is to help people understand from where we came. Anson Burwell was a giant leader of important things. He is the person who caused the YMCA to move from pure Christian education for young men to being a center with gymnasiums, swimming pools and other activities to provide a place for them to have a life off the streets. He set in motion a new and expanded mission for an important organization to provide for the future people of Seattle. Come by the house sometime and I’d be glad to talk to you more about your thoughts about landmark preservation and your backhanded slap about opulence and greed.
It would be great to have some of those facilities now instead of the large house symbolic of oppulence and greed. Rather than admire and acknowledge his work, you’re admiring his fancy house. You’re celebrating the wrong things man…
Also, Seattle Hardware Company and Burwell made much of their fortune outfitting people for the Yukon, so many of those young men he was helping were folks lured here with a promise of possible gold and ended up destitute. Meanwhile, Anson and Gertrude lived fine in their mansion on the hill playing charity with some of their profits.
Well, should they not have outfitted those who sought fortune in the Yukon? Those people exercised free will to try and better their lives, as they defined that. Someone had to provide them the means to do that. And it is rich that you’re lionizing these “young men”, most of whom you would otherwise cast as exploitative colonizers in any other post.
The past is complicated. Your attempts to simplify it, casting people as evil capitalist exploiters or victims, is tiresome.
You know they had a Revolution in Russia over 100 years ago against opulence and greed. How’d that turn out? Perhaps history would teach us if we’re actually willing to listen.
We had a revolution here too, it got us labor rights that tempered rampant child labor and deadly working conditions… Keep beating that dead horse buddy
We do care a lot about the future people of Seattle. Our current city was shaped by those who came before us. That will be true for those that follow us. That is a reason for landmarking our house. Anson Burwell was a remarkable leader in early Seattle. He is the man responsible for the YMCA, expanding its mission from just providing classes in Christian education to include gymnasium and swimming pools to provide a place for young men to have wholesome activities off of the street.
Come by the house sometime. I’d like to talk to you about why you think the reasons for landmarking are driven by respecting symbols of opulence and greed. I take that as a bit of a slap at those of us who are working hard to provide for maintenance of history for those who are going to follow us.
When’s a good time?
Please don’t use any tax exemptions for maintaining your mansion, I think we need those dollars towards other types of housing right now.
We have no understanding of. nor interest in, tax exemptions. That simply is not a part of any of our considerations. We restored this place with our savings, and it is our house. Of course we need a lot of housing now for people of low and moderate income. That is why we support those efforts. Not knowing you gives me no sense of how you contribute to civic health and growth including providing support for moderate and low income housing. Is it the case that you are putting your time and money into those causes or are you simply spending your energy in making assumptions about how others are spending their time and money? Share with us all the depth of your contributions financially and with your time to help create more public housing in ways that are not dependent upon criticisms and assumptions of selfishness and greed of others who are supporting our civic health.
That’s great to hear, thanks! Unfortunately that’s a common incentive for historical registration (it’s listed in the article and highlighted in most preservation groups materials).
It’s frustrating how much effort and political will is spent on celebrating the giant mansions of our last gilded age while we’re in the midst of a second one that is strangling our city and country. One doesn’t become a millionaire in the early 1900s without some exploitation along the way, I think his efforts with YMCA sounds good. If it was really about that though, then why is the only information you can find about him online, actually about your house? It would be cooler to see it as part of YMCA or something, but this just feels like a slap in the face while most of us are just getting by and the oligarchs are at the helm of the federal government.
I come from a family of civil servants and am a civil servant myself. I work in environmental protection and have dedicated my life to public health and environmental justice. Mansions and these other symbols of oppulence and greed are just celebrating the failed ideas of the past and continue to holding us back from being an equitable and just society.
Our city was shaped on colonialism and deforestation… let’s start there.
You don’t seem to have the ability to hold two concepts in your brain at the same time. A future in which Seattle either preserves some history or builds housing is a false dichotomy. Who wants to live in your simplistic all or nothing city? Stupid.
You don’t seem to understand that these groups could be saving public buildings for the benefit of all but instead are saving the mansions of the capitalist leaders they admire. I’m fine with saving things, but all these stupid mansions are a waste of money, time, and political will. Historic Seattle is a public development authority in the same sense that Seattle Housing Authority, Community Roots, and the Social Housing developer. The majority of their properties are their own personal pet projects. It’s naval gazing, not civic building.
Well, I don’t want a city where everything is new. I think beautiful older buildings should have a place, even if (gasp!) they are much larger than average and (double gasp!) privately owned. That area of Capitol Hill has many exceptional homes and it would be a real shame, in my opinion, to tear them all down. We can make room for others in our city without destroying everything that came before.
Sure, but we don’t need to be giving tax exemptions to private homeowners for their mansions…
“For the benefit of all” sounds a bit like “for each according to their needs.” Now where have I heard that before.
Soviet Union style apartments, Cabrini Green rebirth, or you riot. All out for ugly housing! Smash the Capitalist past and control the Socialist future!
You’re so hyperbolic, it’s not revolutionary to question giving tax breaks for rich folks to maintain their mansions, that’s just asking for more responsible and equitable use of our tax dollars.
Matt, seems like you won’t be happy until there are no more structures at all in Seattle and we are all living in tents trying to protect ourselves from each other with shanks.
How did you come to that conclusion at all? I’m all for what the social housing developer are doing, and think the core missions of SHA and Community Roots is important, even if their execution isn’t always great. Historic preservation can serve the broader public (see Washington Hall and Town hall for example), but it can also be a tax loophole for the wealthy, and there’s far too much of that.
In 100 years should we be putting Bill Gates’ and Jeff Bezo’s mansions on the historical registry and give tax breaks to whoever lives there?
Yeah, this is a weird moment to see this in the news. More people are homeless in this country, state, and city than have ever been homeless before. A billionaire has taken over our, admittedly, already oligarchical government. And then we get to hear about the home restoration hobbies of the bourgeoisie and hear them talk about how they “do this because they care.” I’ll remember that the next time I’m waiting in line at the food bank.
A glitch….
The house is 121 years old if it was built in 1904, not 101.
Yes, correct.
Yes, of course — thanks for the catch. Sorry for the typo.
I love this house and am so happy it’s being considered for protection!
Bryce & Chris: Thank you so much for taking the time and energy to landmark your beautiful/historic home for the benefit of our city and neighborhood. Please don’t listen to the far-leftist naysayers who see issues like landmarking only through their limited, selfish ideology.
Nothing angers the Urbanists like the idea that architecture from a bygone era might be worth saving. Urbanists fantasize about building maximum density and minimal artistry whenever possible so preservation of a grand old home like this is seen as a philosophical and tactical loss. A reminder of Seattle’s prosperous merchant Capitalist past. It’s OK folx, you’re still covering most of town in efficient ugly brutal buildings that would make a Soviet citizen proud. Be a gracious winner for once and celebrate when a beautiful old building is preserved.
Things don’t anger me much more than people being so brainwashed as to carrying water for somehow celebrating homes in one of our first gated communities… They really like to leave that part out. If these people loved Seattle they would point out the warts of an area called millionaires row that was designed such that the streetcar wouldn’t go there (very civic minded of them) and how it took more recent populist movements to open the area up to the public. Why are we celebrating this!
It was never a gated community – that is an urban myth.
As someone who knows the owners of this house, some of the comments are way off the mark. These people have restored a house of historic significance. They are also people who have volunteered and worked for non profits. They have housed students in this lovely home. They do so much for our community. I am appalled at some of the mean spirited and downright nasty comments.
I agree with you, although the ‘off the mark’ comments seem to come from one person. Bless his heart. His feet must hurt.
Really? That’s what appalls you right now? You’re shocked that, as a billionaire takes over our government of other, equally oppressive millionaires, that this pisses people off?? While we sleep on sidewalks, in tents, and in our cars, far outside the comfort of the legacy wealth that exists on a street dubbed “Millionaire’s Row?” Read. The. Room.
I love walking down 14th on the way to Volunteer Park – it is a stroll through Seattle’s history, and the houses are beautiful and distinct. It is possible to build more densely in Seattle, and not create a dystopian future where the past is entirely obliterated. The house owners should be applauded – the city and the city’s future residents will benefit.
Yes! I feel the same!