When the ship canal was completed in 1917, it created a change in the definition of the boundaries of the Fremont neighborhood. There had been a Fremont Bridge (over a small stream) before the ship canal and “Fremont” had included the area on the south side. The area as far south as Florentia Street, now on the south side of the bridge, was part of a plat called Denny & Hoyt’s which defined the original Fremont. But once the wide channel of the ship canal was created, the south side came to be defined as Queen Anne area.
In those early years after creation of the ship canal, the areas along its banks were quite industrial & commercial. One of the early businesses was Bleitz Funeral Home, a very visible building which still stands today on the south side of the Fremont Bridge. The Bleitz building, which is historically landmarked, and an addition on its west side have been renamed Fremont Crossing, an office complex.
Next to Bleitz an early business was Canal Iron Works, defined as a blacksmith shop. A blacksmith might do any kind of welding, including fabrication or repair of metal tools. In the booming housing industry in the 1920s, the shop might have made stair railings and fireplace screens for home use.
From the 1920s to 1940s Canal Iron Works was owned by Eric Hager, a Swedish immigrant. When the Hager family’s two sons got jobs at the Navy Ship Yard at Bremerton, the entire family moved to Kitsap County. The next owner of the shop, Danish immigrant Carl V. Torp, renamed it Ornamental Iron Works, as shown in this 1958 photo.
In 1990 a new building, Ponti Seafood Grill, was built on the old ironworks site. This popular restaurant was built with patios and overlooks to the interesting boat traffic on the ship canal. The restaurant closed in 2016 when the owners retired, having received an offer from the Queen Anne Elks Club to buy the building.
Sources:
Bleitz Funeral Home at 316 Florentia Street, now an office building called Fremont Crossing.
Ponti Seafood Grill info.
The founding of Fremont in 1888: the original land area was from Florentia Street on the south, up to North 39th Street, called the Denny & Hoyt plat.
Photo: our thanks to Christine Cameron who shared this photo of the iron shop then-and-now. Mr. & Mrs. Torp were her “foster great-grandparents” because the Torps took in the Jensen children who had been orphaned.