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Stone Way in the 1930s: the 3500 Block

Posted on by Valarie

In the past twenty years Stone Way has been transformed from semi-industrial and construction-industry use such as electrical and plumbing companies, to a gleaming row of apartments and office buildings. Today the 35 Stone Office Building has replaced the old-time businesses in the 3500 block.

In the 1930s Fremont & Wallingford were already inside of the Seattle City Limits, and homes had electricity, but there was still use of coal, hay and kindling for woodstoves or fireplaces. Some people kept chickens, too, and horse-drawn road-grading equipment was still in use. The Stoneway Hay & Grain Company at 3500 Stone Way, continued operating into the 1950s.

Immigration had slowed in the 1930s and now there were more first-generation American businessmen in Fremont. Rasmus Rasmussen of Stoneway Hay & Grain had been born in Iowa of parents who immigrated from Denmark. August J. Kirchner, owner of the neighboring business at 3504 Stone Way, had been born in St. Louis, Missouri, of parents who had immigrated from Germany in the 1880s. Kirchner’s business on Stone Way was called Chief Rug & Mattress Company.

At the north end of the 3500 block of Stone Way in the 1930s was Eastern Fuel Company, Socrates A. Geftax, President. Mr. Geftax had changed the spelling of his name from Geftakis, perhaps for ease of pronunciation. He was an immigrant from Meropy, Greece who came to Seattle in 1929 and spent the rest of his life here. Mr. Geftax had two co-investors at the fuel yard but he lived on-site himself.

By the 1950s this block of Stone Way had one-story office buildings — no more hay, grain, or mattresses. The present tall building at 3500 Stone Way, completed in 2024, represents the third era in the evolution of this block.

A brick at Troll’s Knoll

Posted on by Valarie

The Friends of Troll’s Knoll is a community group dedicated to preserving and maintaining the green space around the Fremont Troll on North 36th Street, under the Aurora Bridge. The Troll’s Knoll includes a garden area and in recent digging, this paver brick was unearthed. The name stamped on the paver, Denny Renton, was a company which closed in 1927 and was in what is now part of the Cedar River watershed. It is hoped that this brick paver artifact can be incorporated into the other art features in the garden at Troll’s Knoll.

The lights are on again at the “Interurban.”

Posted on by Valarie

The Waiting for the Interurban statue is at the intersection of North 34th Street and Fremont Avenue. It memorializes the former rail line, called the Interurban, which went northward through Fremont to the city of Everett. This transfer point at the intersection, where City of Seattle streetcar lines also converged, did much to give Fremont the reputation of being the “center” of things, the Center of the Universe.

The Interurban statue was created by Richard Beyer in 1978. In 1979 Peter Larsen was commissioned to add a pergola with lights. The lights had been knocked out in a 2023 car crash against a nearby power pole (not a crash at the pergola itself.) Now, as of October 2025, the lights have been restored. Our thanks to the City’s signal technician who did the electrical work, and thanks to the Fremont Neighbor blog for the wonderful night photo of the Interurban lights.

The Hall of Giants: The Story of Fremont and the Troll

Posted on by Valarie

In 1990 the Fremont Arts Council sought proposals for a vacant area on North 36th Street which was directly underneath the Aurora Bridge. Immediately the folktale of the troll beneath the bridge came to mind, and this design proposal won acceptance.

The Fremont Troll became so popular that in 2005, the City of Seattle changed the name of the north-south avenue leading to it, to Troll Avenue. This made it much easier for visitors to Seattle to find the Fremont Troll.

Today the Friends of the Troll’s Knoll volunteer group maintain the area around the Troll and they host events in the adjacent green space with other artworks.

When at the intersection of Troll Avenue and North 36th Street, the view from under the bridge downhill to Lake Union is like that of a medieval castle hall, with the arching piers of the Aurora Bridge. The area of the Fremont Troll thus has its own folklore as part of an imaginative Hall of Giants.

A documentary film, The Hall of Giants: The Story of Fremont and the Troll, tells the story of how the troll was built and how it enhanced community bonds in Fremont. The DVD of the film is now available from the Seattle Public Library system although, after coming available in October 2025, there is already a waiting list for it. The film is also available for rent from Scarecrow Video of Seattle.

Who was B.F. Day?

Posted on by Valarie

Benjamin Franklin Day was 45 years old when he and his wife Frances arrived in Seattle in the spring of 1880.  

Born in Ohio, B.F. Day had farmed in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri.  Biographical notes indicate that Day wanted to leave farming because of the hard physical labor. We don’t know why he chose to come to Seattle, but as a former farmer who had raised corn & hogs, B.F. Day would have known the importance of railroads in moving products to market.  In the 1870s-1880s there was constant speculation about railroad routes across the USA.  B.F. Day may have chosen to come to Seattle because he thought that Seattle had a good chance of becoming the terminus of a transcontinental railroad line, and that there would be good economic conditions in Seattle. 

In Seattle B.F. Day worked as a real estate agent and he quickly became involved in civic affairs.  He served on City Council in 1883-1884 and he was one of the original members of the Lake Washington Improvement Company which was organized to create a ship canal.  The Company’s proposed plan was to widen the stream from Lake Union, flowing westward to Puget Sound, so that logs could be floated to mill and coal barges towed by ships.  For this reason, in 1882 B.F. Day began buying land near Lake Union and the future community of Fremont.  He believed that the future canal would cause property values to rise around that area on the western shore of Lake Union, so he bought property as an investment. 

As of 1888 the Fremont area, from Florentia Street (south side of the bridge) up to North 39th Street, was released from legal impediments so that the land could be opened for settlement.  B.F. Day bought an adjacent tract of land just north of 39th Street and built his own house there at 3922 Woodland Park Ave North. 

As of 1888 when Fremont began to be settled, it was a suburb, outside of the city limits of Seattle, and it had no organized school system.  School in Fremont began in a series of temporary locations with parents organizing to pay teachers.  In 1889 B.F. Day paid the rent for a building, a vacant storefront at 36th & Aurora, so that it could be used as a schoolhouse. 

In 1891 Fremont was officially annexed to the City of Seattle, and the Seattle School District made plans to build a new school in Fremont.  As a real estate agent who saw the Fremont community developing, B.F. Day knew that families would be more interested in buying property to settle in Fremont if there was a good school building.  He’d seen other neighborhoods with hastily-built wooden school structures which deteriorated or were not big enough.  B.F. Day offered to donate property on North 39th Street between Fremont & Linden Avenues, to build a school in Fremont, on the condition that the structure would be well-built and permanent, not temporary.    

Architect John Parkinson was hired, and a two-story brick school was built which opened in May 1892.  The form of the school building was like the letter H so that more sections could be added onto the original.  Fremont grew so much in the 1890s that additions had to be built to accommodate the growing population of school-age children.  Ironically B.F. Day, who never had any children of his own, is best remembered in Seattle history for this school which still serves the children of Fremont today. 

Sources:

Seattle School Histories: B.F. Day School. HistoryLink Essay # 10494.

The Life of B.F. Day, Part One and Part Two, articles on the Wedgwood in Seattle History blog.

The Burke-Gilman Trail in Fremont

Posted on by Valarie

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.  Early Seattleites hoped to widen and deepen this stream to accommodate ships. Known as The Outlet or Ross Creek, the level ground of this area was also an ideal route for a railroad, crossing east-west along the northern shore of Lake Union.  But neither objective, a rail line or a canal, 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 ship canal project would not come to completion until it was constructed in 1911-1917. 

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: 

More background details about the lives of Judge Thomas Burke and Daniel Gilman, a blog article on the Wedgwood in Seattle History page.

The story of William Strickler. 

Pioneers of Fremont: John Ross. 

The founding of Fremont in 1888. 

Wedgwood’s Trailmakers: the Burke-Gilman Trail. 

C.P. Stone, Namesake of Stone Way

Posted on by Valarie

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.

The Ross and Fremont Post Offices

Posted on by Valarie

Some Seattle-area neighborhoods, like Bothell, were named for early settlers.  With the arrival of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad in 1887, a railway station could give its name to the neighborhood. 

Just north of Seattle’s Queen Anne hill, the Ross family had land claims on both sides of a stream called The Outlet, which flowed from Lake Union westward out to Puget Sound.  The Ross family gave permission for the new railroad to come across their property and the railroad planners named a station in their honor.  This caused the area to acquire “Ross” as a place name. 

Ross was to the west of Fremont, bordered by 3rd Ave NW, and it included land on the south side of today’s ship canal.  The earliest listings of “Seattle Seminary” (today’s Seattle Pacific University) in the City Directory of the 1890s gave its location as “Ross.”  This also had to do with an actual post office for Ross, so that people could list it as their address.  

The Ross Post Office opens in 1888 

The coming of the SLS&E Railroad gave rise to more commercial development wherever a railway station was built.  There was a general store and a Ross Post Office which opened on July 30, 1888, at 318 Ewing Street, on the south side of The Outlet. Today that address is on the west side of a canalside pocket park, near the present King County Wastewater building. 

The first postmaster of Ross was Alfred J. Villars who had been born in 1843 in Clinton County, Ohio, and had served in the Union Army during the Civil War.  As typical of many Civil War veterans, Alfred Villars married in 1865 after the war, and then the couple gradually moved westward across the USA.  In 1888 Alfred & Harriet were listed in the Seattle City Directory as living in Ross where Alfred was postmaster.  We know, however, that Harriet might have been the “default postmaster” because Alfred had another job.  Perhaps this arrangement was not satisfactory, as another postmaster took over by the end of 1888.

Alfred Villars was a “title abstractor,” someone who researches property ownership so that sales of land can proceed without legal hang-ups.  A title search ensures that there are no outstanding “encumbrances” such as liens against the property.  This work would have meant that Alfred spent most of his time in the King County courthouse in downtown Seattle where records where kept.  

In 1897 the Villars moved away from Ross when Alfred got a job at the downtown Seattle Public Library, where he worked for the next 23 years in the library’s “newspaper room.”  In those days before radio, TV and the Internet, newspapers were vital sources of information.  Newspapers were made available at the Seattle Public Library so that people could read them without a subscription.  

The Ross Post Office closed in 1901.  In 1902 the building at 318 Ewing was referred to as Old Post Office, in a list of polling places for elections. 

Growth of Fremont outstrips Ross 

Although both communities had a railroad stop, in the summer of 1888 the growth of Ross was eclipsed by that of Fremont.  Fremont’s developers set up a lumber mill to help provide for housebuilding, and they advertised that the first hundred people to come to Fremont could buy a house lot for $1.  Fremont, centered around today’s North 34th Street & Fremont Avenue where there was already a bridge across The Outlet, soon boomed with commercial and industrial growth.  In contrast with Ross which was not a planned community, Fremont had developers who planned and organized for growth, including promotion of Fremont in real estate ads in the newspaper.  

The Fremont Post Office opens in 1890   

Fremont’s post office opened on March 25, 1890.  Like the Ross Post Office, at first it operated out of a home on the south side of the existing Fremont Bridge, probably to get clear of the frenzy of building and lumber mill work on the north side of the bridge. 

The first postmaster of Fremont was Thomas C. Ralston, someone who had only arrived in Seattle in 1888.  He joined those going to Fremont for jobs in that first year of the community.  Though he obtained the job of postmaster, it is likely that his wife Ida was the one who was doing that work from their home, while Thomas worked at the lumber mill in Fremont. 

Death of the postmaster

Thomas Ralston’s term as Fremont postmaster was brief.  At age 37 on August 11, 1892, Thomas received a fatal injury while he was unloading logs from rail cars, using a chute to let the logs slide down into the water, at the site of the Fremont lumber mill.  The King County Death Register recorded that Thomas had been struck by a log so that he had an internal hemorrhage (bleeding). 

A Ralston family letter of August 23, 1892, tells that they had heard from Sylvester “Sil” Ralston, brother of Thomas, what had happened to Tom: 
“. . .You ask me if I had heard any more from Sil and if Tom was in Washington yet. Poor man. He is there but under the sod. He was killed the 11th day of this month while unloading logs out of rail cars into the lake. He had unloaded one car… the logs begun to roll down the chute and one of them struck him in the breast and knocked him into the water. There was but one man there with him. He was a car repairer. He got Tom out on the bank and asked him if he was badly hurt and if he should go to get some help.  Tom said, I’ll be all right in a minute. The man soon asked him again and Tom made the same reply, but he then closed his eyes in unconsciousness.  The man laid Tom back on the ground and went for help.  

They took Tom home. The doctor said several ribs were broken, and Tom soon breathed his last. They put a subscription in circulation and realized $102.25. It took $75.00 to pay funeral expenses and the rest was given to his wife Ida. They had a petition going around asking that she be appointed postmistress in his place. It was being signed wherever it went.”     

For the next year and a half, Ida Ralston was listed as postmistress at Fremont but it is likely that there was not enough income for her to support her family.  She was now a widow with four daughters under nine years of age.  In 1894 Ida moved to downtown Seattle where she successfully ran a lodging house. 

Neighborhood names 

At times when there were gaps of service of postmasters, mail for Fremont was directed to the post office of a neighboring community such as Ross or Edgewater.  There was no home delivery of mail; people had to go to the post office to pick up letters.  Newspapers often ran lists of names of people to let them know a letter was waiting for them.   

Edgewater’s post office opened on May 20, 1889. The postmaster was William Ashworth who lived at the present site of the North Transfer Station, on North 34th Street just east of Stone Way.  Like Ross, Edgewater was a railroad stop and a name for a community.  These names didn’t “stick.” Today the former Ross area is referred to as North Queen Anne.  The ship canal, completed in 1917, changed the landscape so that Fremont was defined as on the north side of the canal only. 

The community names of Edgewater and Latona faded away as the name Wallingford gained in common use. Today Stone Way is considered to be the boundary between Fremont and Wallingford.  Now the closest post office which serves the Fremont area is in Wallingford on North 47th Street just east of Stone Way. 

Sources: 

Fremont in Seattle: Street Names and Neighborhood Boundaries.

HistoryLink Essay #494, “Ross Post Office opens on July 30, 1888”, by Greg Lange, 1998.

HistoryLink Essay #508, “Fremont Post Office opens on March 25, 1890”, by Greg Lange, 1998.

Ross School in Fremont.

Street names lookup list: Seattle historian Rob Ketcherside has listed old and new street names in a search table. Most of the street names in Fremont were changed over time. Fremont Avenue, for example, was once called Lake. It was changed because more than one neighborhood was using that name. Beginning in 1895 the City of Seattle tried to rename streets for clarity and so that there would not be duplicate names.

Plats of Fremont

Posted on by Valarie

One of the ways to trace neighborhood history is by its land use, including plats of land laid out with streets and house lots. This map of the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle is marked with plats and their names.

The founding of Fremont in 1888 was in the area closest to the ship canal, although at that time it was only a small stream called The Outlet. The plat, which was named Denny & Hoyt’s, was on both sides of the stream, as far south as Florentia Street and to the north, at 39th Street, marked in light yellow on this map. A “plat” is a map of streets and house lots within the borders of a land claim. Plats have names, and the list is shown here, of the plats in Fremont.

Fremont’s original founders bought about 212 acres which had been the homestead land claim of early Seattleite William Strickler. Strickler disappeared in 1861 and the issue of who would come into ownership of his land, was not settled until 1887. Finally, Seattle investors Denny & Hoyt were able to buy this property. They soon re-sold it to the Blewetts, investors who came from Fremont, Nebraska. The Blewetts kept the original plat name which is the large section shown in light yellow on the plat map. Fremont was outside of the Seattle City Limits at that time, so it was founded with its own name, like a suburb.

Over time, many other investors bought sections of land, represented by the different colors in this map. Some investors lived in Fremont themselves, such as Sidney S. Elder, a former pharmacist, who transitioned into real estate work. He named his plat the S.S. Elder’s Orchard Addition. Another Fremont resident was a Civil War veteran, George Boman. His plat of land was named Edgemont to give tribute to Fremont + Edgewater plats nearby, on the eastern edge of the neighborhood near Stone Way.

The red-colored plat in the center of the map is that of B.F. Day, a real estate investor who donated the land for Fremont’s B.F. Day Elementary School. Mr. & Mrs. Day lived nearby and were active in Fremont beginning in the 1880s. When the Days filed their plat, it was technically outside of the original Fremont area, bordering it at North 39th Street. The map here, shows our present-day perception of the Fremont neighborhood which is now considered to have its northern border at North 50th Street.

Directly above B.F. Day’s plat is Sunset Heights (blue slash lines). This plat, filed by two Norwegian immigrant couples, tells the story of life in Seattle in the 1880s-1890s. These landowners did not live in the plat themselves but hoped to derive income from lot sales.

Ross School in Fremont

Posted on by Valarie

Ross Park on Third Ave NW at NW 43rd Street is the former site of Ross School.  It was named for the family who were the earliest settlers in the western part of Fremont.  

The John Ross family took land in homestead claims on both sides of what is now the ship canal, including the present site of Seattle Pacific University.  Up until the ship canal was created in 1911-1917, there was a stream flowing westward toward Puget Sound. When the Ross family moved to a new house on the north side of the creek, they cooperated with neighbors to build a school for the community’s children at the site of what is now Ross Park.

The school population grew larger until a new building was needed. The building pictured here, was an eight-room schoolhouse which opened in 1903.  The school closed in 1940 and children were then sent to West Woodland Elementary.

Fremont Public Art: The Berlin 1936 Crew Racer

Posted on by Valarie

The Data 1 office building at 744 North 34th Street was completed in 2017 and has outdoor artworks on each side of the building. At one side, underneath the Aurora Bridge, is a fragment of the Berlin Wall which tells of the triumph of the human spirit when Communism fell in 1989.

At the other corner of the Data 1 building (on the left as you look at it) is a metal sculpture of a man holding an oar, labeled Berlin 1936. This is a reference to the Olympic Games of that year, when the crew racers from the University of Washington in Seattle went to Berlin and came out of nowhere to win their race. The story of Seattle’s hardscrabble crew racers has inspired Fremont folks to nickname this metal sculpture, “Joe Rantz” for the main character in the book, The Boys in the Boat (2013).

Fremont Public Art: The Berlin Wall Fragment

Posted on by Valarie

The Berlin Wall divided East and West Germany and was torn down by its citizens on November 9, 1989, during the collapse of dictatorial rule of the Communist countries of Eastern Europe.   We remember this significant historical event at the Berlin Wall and what it represents, the freedom of self-rule.

The Berlin Wall was completely demolished at that time, and fragments were carried away as mementos. The fragment which has been installed as public art in Fremont, is located on Troll Avenue at North 34th Street, underneath the Aurora Bridge, at 744 North 34th Street.

The Fremont fragment of the Berlin Wall is twelve feet high and four feet wide.  It was originally installed in Fremont in the year 2001 close to the spot where it is now.  It was put into storage while the present building was under construction in 2016-2017, then was set up on the sidewalk.

The plaque explaining the fragment says: “This piece of the Berlin Wall arrived in Fremont in 2001 to commemorate the role of Seattle and Boeing’s C-47 in the Berlin Airlift of 1948.” The Berlin Airlift was the efforts of American, British and French cargo planes to supply the portions of the city which had been blockaded by the Soviet Union.

Fremont Public Art: The Lenin Statue

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In 1981, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia commissioned Bulgarian sculptor Emil Venkov to create a statue that portrayed Vladimir Lenin as a bringer of revolution.  Briefly installed in Poprav, Czechoslovakia, the 16-foot bronze statue was sent to a scrapyard after the 1989 fall of Communism.

The statue in the scrapyard was discovered by Lewis Carpenter, an English teacher from Issaquah, Washington, who was teaching in Poprav and knew the artist.  Purchasing the statue with his own funds, Carpenter mortgaged his house to ship it to the USA.

But the City of Issaquah refused to display the statue of Lenin and, after Carpenter’s sudden death, it was sent to a foundry in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, to be melted down.

The statue of Lenin was saved again, this time by the foundry’s founder, Peter Bevis.  He convinced the Fremont Chamber of Commerce to display it until a buyer could be found. The statue was unveiled in 1995 and moved to its current location, 3526 Fremont Place North, in 1996. It remains controversial, however, its hands frequently painted red to symbolize the blood on Vladimir Lenin’s hands.  Other people admire the irony of a symbol of oppression which is now looking out over the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle where the motto is, “the freedom to be peculiar.”

Here’s more about “what was there before” Lenin:  a gas station.

The Fremont Neighborhood in Seattle is Founded in 1888

Posted on by Valarie

Each neighborhood of Seattle proudly waves the banner of its unique name, and yet many were named in a similar way:  by real estate investors.   Fremont in Seattle was also named by real estate investors.  What made the Seattle neighborhood called Fremont stand out from others, was its good location, its jump-start after Seattle’s Great Fire of 1889, and its vigorous developers who utilized the growing streetcar system to advantage.

Continue reading “The Fremont Neighborhood in Seattle is Founded in 1888”

The Motorline Land Plats in Fremont

Posted on by Valarie

Fremont was opened in something like a land rush in the summer of 1888, when lots were first offered for sale. The original area of the landowners was from Florentia Street on the south side of the Fremont Bridge, as far north as North 39th Street. Outside of that area, beginning in 1888 other property owners rushed to have their land surveyed and laid out in lots to sell. A cluster of different landowners began naming their sites “Motorline” as they knew that there were plans for a streetcar line on what is now Woodland Park Avenue North.

A plat for a section of land from North 42nd to 45th Streets in Fremont was filed in November 1889 and named Third Motorline Addition. The property owners were two couples, Frank Harvey Winslow & his wife Mary, and John D. Smith & his wife Margaret. The two families may have become acquainted as neighbors, as both lived on West Garfield Street on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill.

Frank Winslow’s life was a classic American story of westward migration. Born in Vermont, he’d lived a few years in Boston where he learned the mercantile business. In his mid-twenties in the year 1861, he went by ship to San Francisco and then to the Pacific Northwest. He found employment as a bookkeeper at the Port Discovery lumbermill in Jefferson County. In 1870 he became a customs inspector and in the 1880s he rose to become US Customs Inspector at Seattle.

Frank Winslow retired in 1889 and it appears that he planned to live from then on, from the profits of real estate investments in Seattle. The Winslows and Smiths combined their holdings to create this plat in Fremont; John D. Smith was a real estate agent in Seattle in the 1880s.

In early years, Seattle property owners were allowed to name the streets in their plat, anything they wanted. This caused streets to have different names along their course. On the right-hand side of this plat map we see that today’s Woodland Park Avenue had been named Motor Avenue. In the 1880s the street had several names, including Boman, for George Boman who lived in the 3500 block.

Finally in 1895 the City of Seattle decreed that the street system would have to be reorganized because there were too many streets with the same names. There was trouble when someone would call in a fire alarm, for example, to “Park Avenue” as there were quite a few. On this map we see that Park was renamed Winslow by the City process. Some names, such as Allen Place substituted for Vermont Street, did not have to do with this plat but was simply done to make the street consistent with adjacent plats of land. The designation of Motor Place was moved to the small segment of street between 42nd and 43rd Streets.

Sources:

Seattle street renaming process, Fremont street names.

Port Discovery Mill, Jefferson County, Washington.

Find A Grave: This free resource often has biographical info posted. You can read more here about the life of Frank Winslow.

Geary’s Radiator Shop at 4900 Stone Way

Posted on by Valarie

Geary’s Radiator Shop represents the transition of Stone Way from its early semi-industrial businesses such as lumber yards, to today’s restaurants, offices and tall apartment buildings. Today this site has a restaurant (Bamboo Village) and a veterinary clinic. In the early 1960s Mr. Geary sold this property to a developer, who built an office building. It was a real estate office before becoming a restaurant.

Erwin C. Geary was born in Montana, the sixth of eleven children of an Irish immigrant father. Erwin worked on the family farm until he was nearly thirty years old. He married in 1937 and then he & his new wife travelled to Seattle to find work opportunities. A friend, Guy Sanderson, had also farmed in Montana and then established several barber shops in Seattle. He gave Erwin Geary a job at an excellent location, the barber shop on First Avenue at Union Street in downtown Seattle. The location was just a few steps from the Pike Place Market and would have had a lot of shoppers who would stop by for a haircut.

By or before 1950 Erwin Geary was able to own his own business, the radiator shop on Stone Way. We don’t know how he felt about selling the property circa 1960, but perhaps the sale of the site was something that was financially advantageous.

At age 65 in 1972, Erwin Geary was driving on the Alaskan Way Viaduct when he was killed in a head-on collision with a wrong-way driver.

The Stoneway Millwork Company at 3620 Stone Way

Posted on by Valarie

In the early 1900s the population of Seattle continued to grow, with about 25% coming from other countries. Scandinavians were among the most numerous, and carpentry was one of the most common occupations among them.

Swedish immigrant Abraham Branlund worked at carpentry and then transitioned into “workshop” work of wood components called millwork. Millwork could include baseboards, molding, doors and wall trim. Branlund incorporated as Stoneway Millwork Company in 1926, building a 748-square-foot workshop at 3620 Stone Way. He leased this space from Thomas Hocking of the adjacent fuel & lumber company.

Branlund was in his sixties and as he transitioned toward retirement, he took on business partners and then sold the business to them. The business was renamed Thomas & Caskey, cabinetmakers. Bert Defern Thomas & Albert Caskey were typical new residents of Seattle in that they’d been born in the Midwest and journeyed across the USA to settle in Seattle in the 1920s.

On a dark November night in 1940, Abraham Branlund was, as a pedestrian, crossing Green Lake Way just east of Aurora, when he was struck by a car and killed.

The little building at 3620 Stone Way has been through a lot of transitions in the past one hundred years. In the 1960s the building became a restaurant, first known at Guy & Hulda’s French Mill Cafe. Today it is Tacos El Lago, with bright decor to stand out from the larger building, Public Storage which surrounds it on three sides.

The Hocking Fuel & Lumber Company at 3616 Stone Way

Posted on by Valarie

Many of us have never seen a lump of coal, nor have we ever been in a building which was heated by a coal furnace. Coal is a sedimentary rock used primarily as fuel.

In Seattle’s early years, coal was considered to be so important that railroads were constructed to retrieve it and carry it into the city. As a rock-like substance, coal is heavy — a five-gallon bucket of coal weighs about forty pounds. In the 1880s in Seattle, cars and trucks had not yet been invented and so the best way to carry coal, was via railroad. The original purpose of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad was to reach resources such as the coal mines east of Seattle. This rail route is now commemorated as the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Coal was a common fuel source in Seattle up until about 1950, when most houses had converted to oil or electric furnaces. Pictured here as of 1938, was Fremont’s own coal seller, the Hocking Fuel & Lumber Company at 3616 Stone Way.

Thomas James Hocking was born in Cornwall, England, in 1885 and came to Seattle in 1914. He networked with other coal & lumber dealers in Seattle and he joined Fremont’s Doric Lodge, which was a place for businessmen to network and share concerns. In 1934 he was one of a consortium of coal dealers who complained that the City Board of Public Works did not have a fair and open process for bids for coal contracts, for heating City buildings.

The economic depression of the 1930s was hard on businesses. Mr. Hocking found a way to derive more income by allowing another business to build a shop at one end of his property and pay rent to him. The Stoneway Millwork Company at 3620 Stone Way bought lumber from Mr. Hocking to make wood components such as window sashes, railings, doors and cabinets.

Today the smaller building at 3620 Stone Way still stands. It is surrounded by the large Public Storage building at 3616 Stone Way which replaced the former fuel & lumber yard.

Fremont in 1893

Posted on by Valarie

The Sanborn Insurance Company produced this map in 1893, showing the main business intersection of Fremont. For fire insurance purposes, the map was meant to show whether structures were built of wood, brick, or masonry, and how close they were to other structures.

The street names shown here, are the original ones chosen by Fremont’s developers, before standardization by the City of Seattle. “Lake” is now Fremont Avenue, the cross-street “Ewing” is North 34th Street, and above it, Blewett is now North 35th Street. Thomas Ewing was a developer and real estate agent who helped in the organizing of the street grid. Blewett was the name of the people who came from Fremont, Nebraska, and invested in this land tract.

“Canal” is visible, which was really just a streambed called The Outlet, before creation of the present ship canal.

Florentia Street at the bottom of the map still exists, and this is where the present-day Fremont Bridge reaches the south side of the ship canal. A landmark building on that corner of Florentia is the former Bleitz Funeral Home which has been redeveloped as an office building.

For further info:

Fremont first settled in 1888.

Fremont Street Names.