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Author: Valarie

Valarie was born in Seattle and is a volunteer neighborhood history writer.

The Burke-Gilman Trail in Fremont

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The Burke-Gilman Trail, a walking-biking corridor which passes through Fremont, is the legacy of early Seattle movers-and-shakers, Thomas Burke and Daniel Gilman.  The energy and activism of these men characterized the era of the 1870s-1880s when the population of Seattle began to grow and the city sought to make something of itself. Burke & Gilman transformed the city with their promotion of transportation projects. 

Early Seattleites had already noted that there was a creek flowing westward from Lake Union through what is now Fremont and on out to Puget Sound.  Known as The Outlet or Ross Creek, the level ground of this area was also an ideal route for a railroad.  But neither objective could be achieved until the property ownership issues were resolved.   

Thomas Burke was 25 years old when he arrived in Seattle in 1875 with a law degree in hand.  He became a noted civic activist, joining in with others who were working on trying to get a railroad line into Seattle, and trying to get a ship canal built from Lake Union westward to Puget Sound.  Both the railroad and the ship canal would be used to move raw materials like timber and coal and manufactured items like bricks, to the port on Seattle’s downtown waterfront. 

An area of 212 acres centered at what is now North 34th Street & Fremont Avenue, had been the 1854 homestead land claim of a man named William Strickler.  Stricker disappeared in 1861 and the legal issues of who actually owned the property, went unresolved.  As a result, no one else could acquire the property to develop it, or put through a railroad line, or work on creating a larger channel to accommodate ships. 

Finally in 1887 Thomas Burke found a way to break the legal logjam by bringing suit for the property taxes on Strickler’s land.  Since the heirs of William Strickler did not take action, the future-Fremont land was put up for auction.  In 1888 the Blewetts, investors from Fremont, Nebraska, along with their Seattle co-developers, began laying out streets and house lots in Fremont.  At that same time, Thomas Burke and the railroad committee started putting through the railroad line which today is in the same place as the trail named for him and for activist Daniel Hunt Gilman. 

Daniel Gilman arrived in Seattle in 1883 with a background of multiple areas of expertise.  He was a Civil War veteran from Maine, who’d seen the importance of railroads which had been vital for moving men and supplies during the war.  After the war Gilman worked as a merchant in New York and he also gained a law degree.  Gilman became the key fundraiser for the Seattle railroad which Burke & the committee wanted to have.  They needed investors from “back East” to put up money for the project. Daniel Gilman made several fundraising trips to line up financial backing for Seattle’s home-grown railroad. 

By 1888 the railroad, called the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern, was chugging its way through Fremont along the banks of Ross Creek – not yet a ship canal.  That project would not come to completion until 1917. 

In 1971, at a time when the railroad era was ending, a group of activists in the Wedgwood neighborhood came up with the “rail to trail” idea.  Their efforts successfully preserved the rail line which is now called “Seattle’s longest park,” and was named the Burke-Gilman Trail. 

For more info: 

The story of William Strickler. 

Pioneers of Fremont: John Ross. 

The founding of Fremont in 1888. 

Wedgwood’s Trailmakers: the Burke-Gilman Trail. 

George Boman’s Edgemont Plat

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After the Civil War (1861-1865) war veterans began migrating westward, and some made their way to Seattle.  George Boman from Tennessee arrived in Seattle in 1875 and became a real estate investor. 

In Boman’s home state of Tennessee, during the Civil War some men enlisted to fight with the Union, and some enlisted with the Confederacy.  Perhaps feeling that his life might be in danger because he had fought for the Union, Boman never went back home after the war.  He went across the border to a Kentucky town which had been a Union stronghold.  After a year or so he went to Nebraska where he exercised his right as a Union veteran, to a land claim. 

Boman’s life fits the pattern of many Civil War veterans who heard of Seattle and thought there would be good opportunities to get in on the growth of the city.  Boman invested in Seattle’s street railway system and was a member of the ship canal committee.  His most profitable investments were in land, and he had very good timing of investing north of Lake Union.  Boman moved to what is now Woodland Park Avenue, in 1883.    

Boman’s land investment benefited from the nearby founding of Fremont in 1888.  The boundary line of Fremont was at Albion Avenue.  Boman’s property was just outside of that line, between Albion and what is now Stone Way.  Boman had built a dock and the little steamers which plied Lake Union could let people off there, an ideal situation for a real estate promotor to meet clients. 

After the Great Seattle Fire in June of 1889, land values soared and many more people moved out north of the city.  At that time the areas north of Lake Union were outside of the Seattle city limits, so Fremont was founded with its own name, like a suburb. 

In January 1890 Boman filed a land plat, indicating that he had house lots for sale. Plat filers give their plat a name and we see that the name Edge + Mont gave tribute to the neighborhoods on either side of the Boman’s property.  To the left (west) was the Fremont neighborhood.  To the right (east of Stone Way) was Edgewater.  The name Boman Avenue was first given to what was later renamed Woodland Park Avenue North. 

For more info:  

Series of articles on the life of George Boman. 

C.P. Stone, Namesake of Stone Way

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Corliss P. Stone was an early businessman, real estate investor, and civic activist of Seattle. 

Stone was born in Vermont in 1838 and worked in what was called a dry goods store, meaning household supplies not including food.  Some dry goods stores eventually evolved to sell clothing only.   

As a young man Stone traveled to San Francisco to investigate the business climate and then he came to the Pacific Northwest.  He worked for a time at Port Madison (north end of Bainbridge Island) which was the site of a lumber mill.  He came to Seattle in 1867 and set up a general store. 

Stone became involved in civic endeavors in Seattle such as trying to improve roads and transportation systems.  He became mayor of Seattle in 1872 at a time when the term of service was only one year.  This was probably because the mayoral position was unpaid, and those in public office still had to support themselves with their own businesses. 

By 1873 Stone’s father had moved to Aurora, Illinois. Stone left Seattle for a time to make family visits in Aurora and to gather more investors for Seattle projects.  Stone’s influence caused his nephew, Edward Corliss Kilbourne, to come to Seattle in 1883 where Kilbourne became one of the founders of the Fremont neighborhood in 1888. 

In 1883 C.P. Stone went in with other investors to lay out streets and house lots in a plat called Lake Union Addition.  This plat was at the south end of what is now Wallingford, centered around Wallingford Avenue & Northlake Way.   

In 1889 C.P. Stone went in together with William Ashworth to plat some land on the east side of what became Stone Way.  William Ashworth’s property was at the present site of the North Transfer Station.  Ashworth & Stone named their plat “Edgewater.” This was a stop on the railroad (present Burke-Gilman Trail.) Like Ross and Fremont which also had postmasters, William Ashworth was the Edgewater postmaster who received the mail brought by rail. 

In 1901 C.P. Stone filed a plat, pictured here, called C.P. Stone’s Home Addition.  The southern line of the plat, marked here as Kilbourne Street, is now North 36th Street.  The platted area was on both sides of Stone Way, and this year of 1901 was when Stone Way acquired its name.  The platted area of streets and house lots extends from the Edgemont plat on the left (today’s Woodland Park Avenue) to Interlake Avenue on the right where it meets the Lake Union Addition. 

Sources: 

For more on the life of Corliss P. Stone, see HistoryLink Essays #197 and #22980, and essay #1251 about his nephew Edward C. Kilbourne.  Kilbourne is credited with naming many of the streets in Fremont, including place names from Illinois such as Albion, Evanston and Aurora.  

Another early land investor in Fremont was Charles H. Baker who was from the Palatine suburb of Chicago.  Some names in western Fremont such as Baker Avenue are part of the Palatine Hills plat. 

Street names conversion table:  Seattle historian Rob K has a lookup table of old and new street names in Fremont.  Putting in the name Kilbourne, for example, will show that the street name was changed to North 36th Street. 

Street names in Seattle — lookup list: The Writes of Way blog.

A House and an Auto Shop at 4031 Stone Way

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In the 1930s Stone Way still had private homes but was increasingly mixed with light industrial buildings, gas stations and auto shops. Willam Berry of 4031 Stone Way combined two categories: his family residence and his place of employment.

William Berry had been born in Illinois and came to Seattle as an eighteen-year-old in 1903, hoping to find employment in what he had heard were Seattle’s good economic conditions. William was on the early, leading edge of the automobile service industry. He learned auto mechanics and worked at one of the car dealerships on “auto row,” on Pike Street on Capitol Hill.

By 1917 Berry was able to move into this house on Stone Way with his wife Blanche. Berry established his own auto service shop with the help of an investor (Kinghorn, name noted on the sign). William & Blanche lived in this house until their deaths in the 1950s.

In the early 1960s all the houses on this block, including the Berry’s, were demolished and some single-story retail and office buildings were built. Former stores and offices on this block were Avo Electronics, Big Tree Bikes, Dance Fremont, and some clinics including acupuncture and chiropractic. In the past ten years these smaller buildings have given way to five-story apartment complexes with retail shops at street level. There are no longer any single-family homes on Stone Way in Fremont.

Sources:

Genealogy & City Directory listings.

Photos: On this blog page, click on the Menu tab, and Photos, to see the collection. These photos are from the survey of all taxable structures in King County, which was conducted circa 1938. The photos themselves are kept at the Puget Sound Regional Archives, repository of the property records of King County. The photos are sorted by plat names. The writing on the above photo, “LaGrande Extension,” is the plat name with the notation of Block D, Lot 3. The new building in place of the Berry house, has the same property description.

A House and a Barber at 3521 Stone Way

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In the 1930s in Seattle there were fewer zoning restrictions, so there were streets which had some businesses mixed in with private homes. The 1938 photo collection of King County showed this house at 3521 Stone Way with a barber shop sign in front of the house. There was a gas station next door at 3525 Stone Way. In the 1930s Stone Way began this transition to all-commercial structures so that there are no houses on Stone Way now. 

In the 1930s residents of the house at 3521 Stone Way were Oscar & Marie Skotdal who had immigrated from Norway in 1923.  We don’t know for sure if Oscar or Marie were the ones who had this sideline of hair-cutting in addition to Oscar’s other job, or if they were leasing out space in their house for a barber.  It would have been a good location for a barber, with gas stations and other businesses close by, a very visible site along Stone Way. 

The Skotdal family came to Fremont in an era when men worked very hard at unskilled labor in mills and factories.  City Directory employment listings of Oscar Skotdal showed that he worked in wood products shops such as millwork, and operating machinery at a barrel factory. 

The Skotdal family lived in this house for about fifteen years and raised three sons here.  In 1959 the house and the gas station next door were demolished and a company, Daly’s Paint and Decorating, built their building here at the southwest corner of North 36th Street & Stone Way.  After Daly’s closed in 2018, the building has been utilized for retail storefronts including a coffee shop. 

Sources:   

Genealogy & City Directory listings. 

Fremont Photos: At the top of this page, click on “Menu” and “Photos” to see the collection. 

HistoryLink Essay #3692, “King County Land Use Survey,” by Paula Becker, 2002. 

Puget Sound Regional Archives: repository of the property records of King County.

The 3401 Stone Way Gas Station

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Cars began to appear in Seattle in the early 1900s but it wasn’t until the 1920s that cars became affordable and the numbers of them increased.  Companies such as the Golden Rule Bakery in Fremont, acquired fleets of vehicles to use for deliveries.  The rise in car use in Seattle naturally caused an increase in gas stations along arterial streets like Stone Way. 

In the 1930s the gas station at 3401 Stone Way, pictured here, was operated by Olaf Johnson, an immigrant from Norway.  He lived in the Fremont Hotel, which was lodgings on the second floor of the Fremont Building at 3429 Fremont Avenue (the same building that is there today).  Mr. Johnson would have taken his meals at any of the nearby cafes such as the Fremont Cafe at 702 North 34th Street. 

In about 1940 another immigrant, William Henry Batten from England, acquired this business and renamed it the Cheerio Service Station.  Mr. Batten, born in 1889 in Cornwall, had served with the British Army in the First World War, 1914-1918. Mr. Batten may have wanted to change his life and make a fresh start after the war.  He & his wife immigrated to the USA in 1920 and he worked as an auto mechanic.   

At the onset of the USA’s entry into the Second World War, in 1942 Mr. Batten was required to fill out a draft card, even though he was 53 years old and not expected to serve in the war.  Along with the description of his height & weight, on the draft registration card it was noted that Mr. Batten had a bullet crease along the left side of his head, an indication of a close call during the First World War. 

In the 1950s a younger man, Eskil Hannus, helped run the Cheerio Service Station & mechanic shop.  Mr. Hannus was born in Idaho in 1914, of parents who had immigrated from Finland. 

Today at this site is Stoneway Court line retail shops.   

Sources: 

Genealogy & City Directory listings. 

HistoryLink Essay #957, “First Automobile Arrives in Seattle on July 23, 1900,” by Greg Lange, 1999. 

John B. Agen’s Addition in Fremont

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In the years 1937 to 1940, King County, Washington, undertook a project to photograph every existing building.  As photographers fanned out to neighborhoods, sometimes local children wanted to get in the picture, as in this photo of a house at 4115 Midvale Avenue North in the Fremont neighborhood. 

We may speculate that the younger boy in the photo is three-year-old Ronald Cettie, the child of the house in the background, 4115 Midvale Ave N.  The other boy might be his neighbor, four-year-old Dale Hyldahl of 4125 Midvale Ave N.  Perhaps on this day, Dale sought out a playmate, Ronald, at Ronald’s house. 

Perhaps the basement doors which are standing open, are an indication that the boys had been playing there and came out when they saw the photographer.  Perhaps Ronald’s Great-Aunt Lena was hanging laundry in the basement and momentarily lost track of the boys.  The shadow of death was over this house as Ronald’s mother had died when he was only six months old.  Not long after this photo Mr. Cettie, Ronald and Aunt Lena moved to Wallingford.  Ronald grew up, attended Lincoln High School and the University of Washington in Seattle.  Aunt Lena kept house for Ronald & his father until her death in 1966. 

The writing on the photo, “John B. Agen,” is not the name of the homeowner at 4115.  It is the legal description of the property with the plat name of John B. Agen’s Addition, Block 1, Lot 8.  The plat comprises only two-and-a-half blocks between Woodland Park Ave to Midvale Ave to Stone Way. 

John B. Agen was a Seattle businessman who dominated the dairy products industry in Seattle from 1890 to 1916.   He did not live in the Fremont neighborhood, but this two-block section of property which was platted into house lots, came to be owned by Agen by way of B.F. Day.  B.F. Day was an early resident of Fremont who was a community activist and who donated land for building the present B.F. Day School.   

Like many people in Seattle, B.F. Day was badly affected by the economic crash known as the Panic of 1893.  In a court case ten years later, Mr. Day was questioned as the whether he was “hiding” any money.  He explained that during the 1890s some of the land he had owned, had been transferred into the names of other people so that Day would not lose the property. 

One of those people was John B. Agen.  Mr. Agen helped B.F. Day financially during the 1890s with the expectation that Agen would recover the money later, when the economy improved, by platting the land into house lots. 

John B. Agen had been a successful dairy production businessman in Iowa until, at age 33 in 1889, he decided to see whether he might expand his business to Seattle.  He arrived just days after Seattle’s Great Fire of June 6, 1889.  At first, because of his network of suppliers and storage in Iowa, he was able to bring products from there to Seattle, until he set up local contacts and networks of dairy farmers. 

Agen gained the title of “Father of the Dairy Industry of the Pacific Northwest” for his manufacturing of tinned butter and evaporated milk which was carried by miners to the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897.  Agen also established stores in Dawson, Valdez. Nome and Skagway. 

Agen went through all the highs and lows of life in Seattle.  He was a successful businessman, but experienced the death of his first wife, Catherine, age 30, in 1894.  She left behind the Agen’s seven-year-old son, John Stuart Agen.  John Agen Sr. remarried in the year 1900, a young woman who, like himself, had Irish immigrant parents.  John & Florence Agen had three children together.  

Approaching age 60 in 1916, John Agen began selling his businesses and he then lived on income from investments.  Agen got pneumonia and died in 1920 at age 64.  His widow Florence & her children spent the rest of their lives in Seattle where they were active contributors to the community.  John Agen’s eldest son whose mother was Catherine, was well-known in Seattle as a real estate dealer.

Sources: 

The life of B.F. Day. 

Genealogical & City Directory resources. 

HistoryLink Essay #3692, “King County Land Use Survey,” by Paula Becker, 2002. 

Wikipedia essay:  John B. Agen’s warehouse at 1201 Western Avenue in Seattle. 

The Washington Mantel Company

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Beginning in the 1920s, Stone Way in Fremont was lined with many construction-related companies.  There were suppliers of brick & tile, carpentry, cement work, electricians, painting, plaster & stucco, and flooring contractors.  

In 1925 with co-investors, Frank Ostermeyer opened the Washington Mantel Company at 3425 Stone Way.  The designation of “mantels” (the shelf above a fireplace) was not inclusive of every kind of work the company did.  Over the years the company also dealt in brick, tile and stucco materials as well as their original business, slabs of marble or granite which were used for smaller installations such as fireplace mantels.  The “secret” to their supply of materials was that the building was owned by the Braida family, workers in art mosaic, marble, granite and terrazzo, who lived back-to-back with the Washington Mantel building. 

The Braida house at 3408 Woodland Park Avenue is one of only a few residences in Fremont which have been historically landmarked. The house started out in 1901 as a one-story structure.  John Braida bought the house in 1915 and had it raised up so that the ground floor became his workshop, and the original house, now on the second floor, was the Braida family residence.  Braida was an influential worker in the prosperous building boom of the 1920s in Seattle.  One of his well-known works is the elephant which is at 8800 Aurora Avenue, at the Aurora Rents business (formerly the Aurora Flower Shop). 

Franklyn Peter Ostermeyer was born in 1899 in Pleasant Hill, Missouri, where his German immigrant grandparents had settled in the 1870s.  After Frank was born, his parents began a western migration. Along the way, Frank’s sister was born in Colorado.  The family settled in Tacoma, Washington, in the early 1900s where Frank’s father worked at the shipyard. 

By the time Frank was 25 years old both of his parents were deceased.  Frank married and the couple moved to Seattle where Frank started working at Washington Mantel Company in 1925.  Work went well until the onset of the economic depression of the 1930s, when work became hard to find.  When people don’t have money, the construction industry comes to a near standstill.  During the 1930s Frank Ostermeyer added several sidelines, such as a stucco manufacturing, and he also became an installer for sawdust burners, a kind of stove for heating with sawdust.  In 1938 the name of Frank Ostermeyer appeared along with others in a newspaper ad for “guaranteed” good workmen. 

We may say that working with brick, marble, stone & tile needs an artistic application.  In his sixties, Frank Overmeyer became a noted artist of oil paintings, with exhibits in local galleries.  His son Denis became an art instructor at Shoreline Community College. 

In 1973 the former Washington Mantel building at the southwest corner of 35th & Stone Way was transformed into the workspace of a maker of custom-built bicycles. 

Sources: 

Braida house, 3408 Woodland Park Avenue on the Seattle Historical Sites Index. 

Fremont’s Elephants including the 8800 Aurora Avenue North sign at Aurora Rents.

Genealogical and newspaper references. 

Robinson Tile & Marble Company:  John Braida worked together with this company.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 28, 1938, page 17, advertisement for workmen: brick & tile, carpenters, cement work, electrician, painting, plastering & stucco.  Frank Overmeyer was listed as a “guaranteed good worker” in brick & tile. 

The Golden Rule Bakery

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The Golden Rule Bakery was a major employer in Fremont from 1920 to 1964. It started with one production plant at 4450 Fremont Avenue and expanded into a second building at 3665 Stone Way where the company could park its one hundred delivery vehicles. Stone Way Electric occupied the building at 3665 Stone Way from 1974 to 2000. Both of the Golden Rule buildings have been demolished.

The Golden Rule Bakery was founded by an Irish immigrant, William Henry Pemberton, and two investors. Shortly after starting the business in 1918, Pemberton was arrested for refusing to fill out a draft card. World War One was winding down and, at age 29, Pemberton was unlikely to be drafted into active war service, but he still refused to sign a card, because he said he was a conscientious objector. Pemberton was jailed until 1920. His co-founders of the bakery carried on with the business until he was released.

The bakery was so successful that they built a second production facility in 1922 at 3665 Stone Way. But beginning in 1925, the company came under intense pressures of the growing labor movement in Seattle. Workers of many kinds, from waitresses to factory workers and delivery drivers, were organizing. Labor leader Dave Beck and the Teamsters were accused of trying to intimidate the delivery drivers of Golden Rule and were also accused of a plot to blow up the Golden Rule building at 4450 Fremont Avenue.

Pressure intensified in 1936 when labor leaders organized a boycott of Golden Rule products so that stores would no longer carry that brand. At this critical moment, company president William H. Pemberton died at age 47 on May 9, 1936. Four weeks later, the Golden Rule employees voted to unionize.

Sources:

Genealogy records; newspapers.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, February 24, 1931, page 15, and February 28, 1931, page 3: Bomb plot thwarted at the Golden Rule production plant at 4450 Fremont Avenue.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, April 17, 1936, page 12: Dave Beck & the Teamsters organization were charged with making attacks on the Golden Rule delivery drivers.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, May 12, 1936, page 14: Funeral for W.H. Pemberton, president of the Golden Rule company.

University of Washington Civil Rights and Labor History page: Labor organizing events of the year 1936 in Seattle.

Reference: The Golden Rule Bakery is mentioned in the book, The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown. The main character, Joe Rantz, re-encounters his father Harry in Seattle where Harry is working as a delivery driver for the Golden Rule Bakery.

Sidney Elder’s Orchard Addition

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The notation of “S.S. Elder’s Orchard Addition” on property photos indicates that the building is in a two-block area along North 42nd Street between Woodland Park Avenue to Stone Way. One of the buildings, on the southwest corner of 42nd & Stone Way, is the original Coast Carton Company at 4133 Stone Way.

Mr. Elder arrived just after the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889, and he first lived on Jackson Street near the G.O. Guy Drugstore where he worked. By 1890 he was in Fremont and had become the pharmacist at Fremont Drugstore, 3401 Fremont Avenue.

Mr. Elder became a community booster and founded a reading room, forerunner of the Fremont Branch Library.

Mr. Elder seemed to want to keep moving and expanding his business interests. After more than twelve years in the Fremont Drugstore he left the business to become a real estate dealer. In 1906 he filed a plat map, divided into house lots, on land he owned on North 42nd Street. He & his wife Lillian moved to a house they built within the plat, at 1115 North 42nd Street (southwest corner of Midvale Avenue).

We don’t know whether there really was an orchard at Sidney Elder’s Orchard Addition, but there might have been. It wasn’t unusual for people to plant trees on a site where they hoped to eventually build a house, so that the trees would have time to grow. Mr. Elder would also have known that trees, especially those which were ready to bear fruit, would enhance the land value for prospective buyers.