This large home is located at the northwest corner of Woodland Park Avenue North, and North 49th Street, just a block south of today’s Woodland Park & Zoo. The house, built in 1906, was in a convenient location along streetcar lines. The house is unusually large for the Fremont neighborhood and is distinctive with eighteen wood columns supporting its wrap-around porch. The house was “apartmentized” in 1951, divided up into multiple living units and is still used for apartment housing today.
The house was built for Charles H. Shields, a Seattle businessman who was a grain dealer and also part owner of an automobile dealership, Shields-Livengood Motor Company. Shields and his wife, Emma, had two children. By 1910 their household had expanded with inclusion of Shield’s widowed sister, and a nephew, age 31, who was employed by Shields in the grain company office. In the decade from 1910 to 1920, the household gradually shrank as the Shields children grew up and married. Shield’s fortunes also seem to have been in decline, or perhaps he was having health problems which impeded his work. By 1930, Charles & Emma Shields were living in Portland, Oregon, and at age 65 Charles was listed as a radio salesman. He died in 1935 at age 70.
The writing on the photo is the name of the plat, Woodland to Salmon Bay City, with Block 36, Lot 5, the legal description of the property. The plat map (land area of a couple of blocks, with streets and house lots marked) was filed in 1887 by Robert M. McFadden, and notarized by Guy Phinney, who was the original owner of the Woodland Park land. McFadden was the son of an early Washington Territory judge and legislator, Obadiah McFadden, so that Robert was born in Olympia. Robert went on to work as a banker in Seattle.
Sources:
For more photos of Fremont houses, go to the photo gallery here on this Fremont History page. Photos came from the 1938 survey of all taxable structures in King County.
Genealogical info: City Directories, genealogy websites, Washington Digital Archives, and Find A Grave. Links to Robert M. McFadden and Charles H. Shields.