The Seattle City Council is set to put its stamp of approval on a new Capitol Hill landmark.
Wednesday, the Libraries, Education, and Neighborhoods Committee agenda includes a vote to pass an ordinance extending landmarks controls on the Burwell House on Capitol Hill’s Millionaire’s Row.
CHS reported last year on the process for the 1904-built 14th Ave E house as the landmarks board prepared to approve the nomination. Continue reading
From The People’s Wall landmark nomination (PDF)
Figure 18. The People’s Wall detail of Charlie “Bird” Parker. (Photo: Carlos Imani, Elite Collective, 2014)
The Seattle Department of Neighborhoods’ Landmarks Preservation Board has voted unanimously to approve the designation of The People’s Wall as an official Seattle landmark.
Located at 1919 E Spruce in the Central District, the street-level concrete retaining wall and its 1970 mural have long stood as a community monument.
The People’s Wall sits on the eastern border of a site that once housed a two-story duplex serving as the second headquarters of the Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party from 1969 to 1971.
The nomination was pursued by a community group organized as the Black Heritage Society of Washington State. Continue reading
(Image: Haley Blavka Photography/Save the Royvue)
A Capitol Hill apartment building once at the center of a community effort to save the 1924-era structure from being converted to microhousing has been sold.
The Bellevue Ave Roy Vue Apartments building was acquired by Seattle-based real estate investment firm Kite Partners earlier this month for $11.5 million, according to county records.
Nearly a decade ago, the previous owners of the 34-unit building, Alliance Multifamily Investments, and developers Anew Apartments had an agreement and plan in place to build over the Roy Vue’s garden and overhaul the three-story building to create 147 small efficiency dwelling units in the structure.
The Save the Roy Vue effort was formed to stop the project. Historic Seattle and neighborhood group the Capitol Hill Historical Society joined forces to nominate the property for landmarks protections.
The landmarks board granted the Roy Vue protection status late in 2018.
The designation cited the Roy Vue’s embodiment of “the distinctive visible characteristics of an architectural style, or period, or a method of construction, its presence as “an outstanding work of a designer or builder” and because “of its prominence of spatial location, contrasts” of siting, age, and scale as “an easily identifiable visual feature of its neighborhood or the city.”
But the designation did not protect the building’s interior — only its exterior and garden. Continue reading
“The Caroline Horton House over time. (a) architect’s rendering of the house (Seattle Times, November 25, 1906); (b) 1937 archive photo (Washington State Archive); (c) recent photo (nomination report photo)”
Advocates for preservation of the city’s historic homes and properties have dropped their appeal over a Seattle Hearing Examiner decision this year that could allow a property owner to demolish a landmarked house on Capitol Hill’s Millionaire’s Row to develop a set of eleven townhomes on the 14th Ave E parcel just south of Volunteer Park.
Historic Seattle filed for the “voluntary dismissal” in the case last week.
The organization originally filed the appeal in January after the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board approved a “controls and incentives agreement” for the landmarked Caroline Horton House that imposed no restrictions on the 120-year-old house after the house’s owners were able to show just how valuable the property could be if developed. Continue reading
(Image: Tolliver Temple Memorial C.O.G.I.C)
A Seattle City Council committee will start the final steps for E Fir’s 1929-built Tolliver Temple Church of God to become the Central District’s latest official landmark. The building was first used as a synagogue and later as a Christian church in the predominantly Black neighborhood, reflecting the changing communities in the Central District over the years.
The council’s neighborhoods committee is slated to take up legislation Thursday to finalize the landmarks board’s 2023 decision granting the old church protected status. Continue reading
The Burwell House
The Seattle Landmarks Board will consider the designation of a house on Capitol Hill’s Millionaire’s Row for official protection of its historic elements Wednesday.
The April 16th session follows the successful nomination of the Burwell House this winter. “It is challenging to find Arts and Crafts architecture in Seattle comparable” to the 1904-built 14th Ave E house, the nomination report on the property noted.
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 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. Continue reading
A rendering of the planned new building and the neighboring landmark La Quinta
Thanks — and sorry — to the La Quinta resident who alerted CHS to the notice
Residents of Capitol Hill’s La Quinta apartments have been issued a 90-day notice to vacate as a planned redevelopment of the landmarked property including plans for a new twin apartment building behind the old one at 17th and Denny moves forward.
The March 5th issued notice cites “Substantial Rehabilitation” for the order. Permits to enable demolition of two neighboring houses to make way for the new construction are also in motion.
CHS reported here in 2022 as DEP Homes, a small real estate investment firm that lists an address near Judkins Park in the Central District, purchased the property including the landmarked building and the two neighboring houses for $4.2 million and set about a planned redevelopment that would add a twin five-story apartment building behind the 98-year-old La Quinta structure.
DEP Homes did not respond to CHS’s messages about the notice and the company has not responded to any of our inquiries over the past three years. DEP owner developer Cao Huynh is a prolific Seattle real estate investor. Capitol Hill firm S+H Works is DEP’s architect on the project.
(Image: Viva La Quinta/Jesse L. Young)
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. Continue reading
(Image: CHS)
With reporting by Domenic Strazzabosco
Failing masonry appears ready to rip apart Seattle’s web of public reviews, permits, and financing windows to move a major Capitol Hill development project forward at the corner of Denny and E Olive Way.
City permit paperwork shows demolition approval moving forward “under emergency conditions” on the more than 100 year old, historic — but not landmarks protected — property once home to Capitol Hill classics Holy Smoke, Coffee Messiah, and In the Bowl. The facade of the 1917-era unreinforced masonry building is falling off, according to the filings, expediting the long awaited demolition of the old structures.
Filings show a traffic control plan, right of way impact plan, and haul route map being submitted for approval.
A plan for developing a seven-story, 106-unit mixed-use apartment building at the corner awaits but any work on construction is still a long, long ways off.
The project has yet to begin the public review process and will then need to await the alignment of economic trends and financing windows that has left many Capitol Hill projects on the back-burner.
The property’s developer has declined to comment on the situation and also directed the contractor being brought on to handle the demolition not to speak with CHS about the project. Continue reading
The building as it looks today
By Ayla Nye/UW News Lab
With an affordable housing project set to demolish the building, a December landmarks board hearing could determine the future of a 21st Ave property the city calls “a pivotal location in Seattle’s African American heritage.”
The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections has taken the unusual step of delaying the development of a 49-unit apartment building just off E Madison to determine if the 108-year-old building should be protected on the grounds that the property holds historical and cultural significance, according to the SDCI.
The Madison Inn Work Release, formerly known as the Phillis Wheatley YWCA building, is up for a landmark nomination, a designation that could protect the building from demolition and many types of construction.
Stephanie Johnson-Toliver, president of the Black Heritage Society of Washington State, voiced her concern about the planned building demolition.
Johnson-Toliver is a fourth generation Seattleite. Her family moved to Seattle in 1913 and she has owned her house in the Central District for nearly 30 years. In 1945, her mother was a member of the Phillis Wheatley YWCA Girls Reserve.
“The Phillis Wheatley was created to meet the needs of Black women and children,” Johnson-Toliver said. “They helped shape young women’s opinions and attitudes and we’re socially uplifting them with education and recreation,” she said.
“Established from the ‘Culture Club’ in 1919, this site has been a central hub for black intellectual life, community gathering, black social justice and legal defense groups,” the nomination prepared for the city reads. “It initially functioned as a meeting point and community center, significantly contributing to the social fabric of Seattle’s African American community.”
Ben Maritz is the current owner of the Madison Inn property and the founder of Great Expectations, an affordable housing developer. Maritz has been developing the property since he bought it in July of 2020.
“We went through a whole process, including design review, and received the master use permit, I think, over a year ago,” Maritz said. Continue reading