The Seattle City Council’s Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights, and Culture Committee Friday morning will discuss legislation from the mayor’s office that would keep approvals on small changes to designated landmarks in the hands of city staff. The proposal would keep in place changes made during the pandemic when meetings of groups including the historic review boards that typically hold the power were prohibited.
According to the committee presentation (PDF), the permanent change allows faster approval of necessary changes and repairs to landmark structures by Department of Neighborhoods staff while allowing boards and commissions to focus on more important business. Continue reading →
Seattle Police say they are investigating after the body of a man with fatal stab wounds was found Wednesday night inside an abandoned historic First Hill structure burned in a fire earlier this month.
Police say a 911 caller reported finding the body just before 8 PM in the 9th Ave Prosch House.
The interior and structure of the 1900-era rooming house part of the landmarked German Club property was charred and damaged in a December 2nd fire that swept through the old house.
The house property has been fenced-off since the blaze but its owners have been cited repeatedly over the years by the city’s vacant buildings program for allowing squatters and trash to accumulate on the site. Continue reading →
Named for a Black pioneer credited with shaping today’s Central District, the William Grose Center for Cultural Innovation and Enterprise will begin its work this week as a center for “economic empowerment and community-driven development” providing training, networking, and connections to help launch new businesses and careers in the Central Area, the Africatown Community Land Trust announced.
“Historic Districts are OK, but we don’t want to be museum pieces and plaques in the neighborhood where we once were vibrant,” trust president and CEO K. Wyking Garrett said in the announcement. “This will be a living memorial.”
Built out of the former Fire Station 6 at 23rd and Yesler, Africatown now holds a 99-year lease on the fire station property after its transfer in late 2020 following years of hope and promises including pledges from Mayor Jenny Durkan that summer as Black Lives Matter movement demonstrations grew in Seattle. Continue reading →
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(Image: Viva La Quinta/Jesse L. Young)
Declared a historic landmark last year after a lengthy campaign coordinated by a group of residents, La Quinta apartments has been under new ownership since late August. Though its residents were unable to purchase the Spanish-inspired building for themselves as they had originally intended, one tells CHS the new owners have been respectful of their tenants and the historic property.
“At the start of the pandemic we heard word that the building was going to be sold,” said La Quinta resident Chelsea Bolan.
But at La Quinta, that never happened. The building sold to a real estate developer. It turns out, so far, everything is fine.
Though the group was ultimately unable to purchase the property before it was sold to its new owners, they were successful in pushing for La Quinta to gain historic landmark status in collaboration with local development authority Historic Seattle. Continue reading →
Part of the city’s connective tissue between Capitol Hill, First Hill, and downtown, and a possible first piece of a puzzle in someday capping I-5’s route through Seattle with parks, commercial development, and housing, Freeway Park could soon be an official landmark.
The Seattle Parks space’s nomination for protections of its 1970s era design and municipal brutalism will go up for consideration in front of the landmarks board Wednesday.
David Graves, a strategic advisor for the parks department, said it was time to consider the protections following its 2019 placement on the National Register of Historic Places and as the city gears up for a $10 million overhaul of the unique — and uniquely challenged — park.
Graves said the pandemic-delayed upgrades are now planned to begin early next year when the project is put out to bid in early 2023. “We will be working with the Landmarks Preservation Board to make sure all improvements are consistent with the landmarks designations,” Graves said. Continue reading →
Earlier this month, CHS reported on Capitol Hill’s La Quinta apartments hitting the market and the hopes of residents of the landmarks-protected building at 17th and Denny to have a shot at purchasing the property even as its listing was already live and a sale nearly ready to close.
Thanks to Seattle’s still relatively new under-used Notice of Intent to Sell ordinance, those residents now have at least 30 days to organize a possible bid.
According to an aide to City Councilmember Lisa Herbold, her office looked into the planned sale after learning of the situation through CHS’s coverage and found that at least one unit in the building is renting at rates affordable to those earning no more than 80% of the area median income, requiring the building owners to participate in the Notice of Intent to Sell program. Continue reading →
Now they are in a rush to try to rally together to buy the landmarked building before a sale closes that will move the property into new hands after the death of longtime owner Ken Van Dyke in early 2020.
Residents have started a petition calling on the ownership company set up for the building to hold off on a planned sale and give the neighbors a chance to match the price:
Less than two weeks ago, we discovered that our home was being put on the market. As tenants, we are willing and able to purchase La Quinta collectively, as a cooperative. However, our landlord has refused us the opportunity to purchase, preferring to sell to a buyer who can purchase in cash. Continue reading →
In the midst of change from the Black Lives Matter movement, Seattle is also reckoning with its own history of racism and inequity when it comes to its neighborhoods and efforts to protect some of the remaining buildings and homes.
Wednesday, the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board is set to decide on possible protections for a 1909-built house at the corner of 16th and E Columbia in the Central District that advocates say should be preserved for its architectural value to the neighborhood and as a reminder of the role racist real estate practices shaped the Central District and Seattle. UPDATE: King County records the construction year as 1909 but the landmarks research shows that it dates to 1901.
The Considine House, first built as a private residence and later used as the Immaculate Conception Convent home, has survived decades in the middle of the city and managed to stay useful to the neighborhood even as racist redlining left it empty and abandoned, the group behind the landmarks nomination writes:
In 1972 the Immaculate Conception Church put The Convent on the market. However, the redlining of the 1960s, and lingering racist attitudes about the Central District made finding a buyer impossible. The house sat empty for six years, during which time some of the original fixtures were removed from the house, and sold to antiques dealers. Neighborhood children roller-skated through the vacant rooms, and musicians–including local celebrity Jimi Hendrix– met for practices.
(Source: Seattle Landmark Nomination: THE CAYTON-REVELS HOUSE)
Capitol Hill’s historic Cayton-Revels House is up for nomination for landmark designation Wednesday afternoon with the City of Seattle. Built in 1902, the Queen Anne Victorian-style house was once the home of Horace Roscoe Cayton, publisher of Seattle Black-owned newspaper the Seattle Republican, and his wife and associate editor Susie Sumner Revels Cayton. Community members and the home’s current owners say the landmark designation would be a significant and necessary acknowledgement of Seattle’s Black history.
CHS reported here on the efforts of the 14th and Mercer structure’s owners to achieve landmark status and protections for the 1902-built house, honor the Cayton-Revels family, and recognize the legacy of the racial covenants that shaped Capitol Hill. According to the landmarks nomination, “the Caytons were one of only three Black American families living in today’s definition of Capitol Hill before racial restrictive covenants barred non-white residents in 1927.”
You can learn more about the meeting and how to provide public comment here.
UPDATE: The board voted unanimously for the house to move on to the designation phase. The big vote will take place in early April.
The Seattle Republican was one of the most widely-read newspapers in the region at that time. In print from 1894 to 1913, the Republican appealed to national and local audiences of all races, but primarily focused on local politics and the Black experience. Horace Cayton, born a slave on a Mississippi cotton plantation and educated at Alcorn University, made his way to the Pacific Northwest in pursuit of greater freedoms in the frontier-era West. As Seattle changed from a frontier town to a growing city with increasingly racist power structures and property covenants, Black families were pushed into the Central District, where the Cayton-Revels eventually relocated.
“The Caytons were one of the most well-known Black American families in Seattle at the turn of the 20th century because of their business and political involvements,” said Taha Ebrahimi, a Capitol Hill resident who researched and wrote the 142-page landmark proposal for the Cayton-Revels house. Continue reading →
Capitol Hill’s Cayton-Revels House, once home to Susie Revels Cayton, daughter to the first U.S. Senator of African descent and a writer, newspaper editor and leader in Seattle’s black community, will be considered for official landmarks protections later this month.
The 1902-built 14th and Thomas Mercer structure now used as a rental triplex is marked as both a historical residence of an important Black family in Seattle history and a manifestation of structural racism.
“Horace Roscoe Cayton, his wife Susie Sumner Revels Cayton, and their family lived at 518 14th 1 Avenue East from 1902 to 1909,” the nomination proposal reads. “The Caytons were one of only three Black American families living in today’s definition of Capitol Hill before racial restrictive covenants barred non-white residents in 1927.”
The Seattle City Council’s Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights, and Culture Committee Friday morning will discuss legislation from the mayor’s office that would keep approvals on small changes to designated landmarks in the hands of city staff. The proposal would keep in place changes made during the pandemic when meetings of groups including the historic review boards that typically hold the power were prohibited.
