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Tag: Stone Way

The 3401 Stone Way Gas Station

Posted on by Valarie

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. 

Coast Carton Company, 4133 Stone Way

Posted on by Valarie

In the past twenty years we have seen a complete transformation of Stone Way from a light-industrial area to an avenue of modern apartment buildings.  There are still a few old buildings.  Coast Carton Company at 4133 Stone Way, was built as a box factory in 1912 and the building now has retail storefronts. 

In 1906 James L. Norie of Pennsylvania traveled with his father-in-law, Joseph Kaye, to explore the timber resources of the State of Washington.  They had read newspaper accounts that major timber companies such as Weyerhaeuser and Laird-Norton had left Minnesota and moved to Washington in search of new forests of trees.  Joseph Kaye was also in the lumber business and wanted to try to find a new supply.  He bought a lumber mill in Pilchuck, a mill town near Arlington in Snohomish County, about 40 miles northeast of Seattle. 

A few years later, J.L. Norie brought his family to the Pacific Northwest and operated a lumber mill in Sedro-Woolley, Skagit County. Next, the Norie family moved to Seattle.  Instead of working directly with timber, in 1912 Norie set up a secondary business:  the making of paper boxes from softwood trees such as pine and fir.  Norie built a box factory at 4133 Stone Way (southwest corner of 42nd Street). 

All of James Norie’s family, his parents and siblings, moved to the Pacific Northwest as did those of his wife Martha Kaye Norie.  James & Martha’s son worked at Coast Carton as did James’ nephew Robert, Robert’s wife Lena and daughter Katherine. 

James Norie outlived two wives and continued to manage the box factory until he was in his seventies, in the 1950s.  In 1964 at age 86, Norie attended a reunion at the old ghost-town of Pilchuck, Snohomish County.  He took sick and died in Seattle, two weeks after the Pilchuck reunion. 

Sources: 

Genealogy listings including Find A Grave. 

Plat name: the notation “Elders Orchard” on the Coast Cartons property photo, is the legal description of the plat name. The photo was taken circa 1938 in a survey of all taxable buildings in King County, for property tax assessment.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 8, 1937, page 19:  J.L. Norie’s first wife, Martha, was killed in a car wreck. 

Seattle Daily Times, October 25, 1964, page 98: Lucile MacDonald column about Pilchuck, a vanished town in Snohomish County. 

Fremont’s Northeast Corner: Porterfield’s Addition

Posted on by Valarie

Today the defined area of the Fremont neighborhood is bounded by 50th Street on the north, and Stone Way on the east.  Fremont started in 1888 as a convenient streetcar neighborhood.  Little stores sprang up at intersections of streetcar stops and transfer points, like this one at 4900 Stone Way.   

Over time these streets have been expanded for car traffic and now are largely commercial areas.  Today there is a Bamboo Village restaurant at this address, with a parking lot to accommodate cars.   

A Fremont investment in 1888 

From its earliest years, Seattle attracted investors in business, real estate and timber.  Some investors came for a look around, fell in love with Seattle and never left.  Others came and made investments but then went back home.  Edward & Carrie Blewett of Fremont, Nebraska, came to make land investments in Seattle and they gave the name of Fremont to a suburb-like development which was outside of the Seattle City Limits at that time. 

In that year of 1888 when Fremont came into existence, another investor, Theophilus J. Porterfield, came from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to survey the opportunities in the Seattle area.  Mr. Porterfield was a “timberman” who had lived in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.  During his visit to Washington Territory in 1888-1889 he invested in some timber property in Snohomish County. 

In December 1888 Mr. Portfield filed a plat map for land he’d purchased in the northeast corner of Fremont, between North 45th to 50th Streets.   The property was bounded on the west side by Woodland Park Avenue where Fremont’s backers were in process of laying out a streetcar line to reach Guy Phinney’s picnic grounds and private zoo. 

Mr. Porterfield brought his wife Elizabeth and daughter Wilhelmina Louise with him to Seattle, and the family stayed at a hotel in Belltown, at First & Battery Streets.  It appears that during their sojourn in Seattle the teenage Mina met and fell in love with Samuel Hauser, who worked at the Hauser family’s building contractors company.  Samuel Hauser had been brought to Seattle as child in the 1870s. His father had worked as a carpenter and then advanced to own a builders contracting business.

The Porterfield family went back to Minneapolis, and as soon as Mina turned 18, in 1891 Samuel Hauser went to Minnesota and they were married.  After their marriage, Samuel & Mina stayed in Minneapolis for several more years, perhaps in deference to Mina’s mother who was probably loathe to lose her only daughter. 

Seattle continues to attract investors in the 1900s 

By the year 1900 major timbermen of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area were closing operations and moving to the Pacific Northwest in search of a fresh supply of trees.  In January 1900 newspapers were full of the story of a blockbuster land sale from railroad magnate James J. Hill to timber industry leader Frederick Weyerhaeuser.  Weyerhaeuser moved his lumber operations to the Pacific Northwest, as did the Laird-Norton Company of Minnesota. 

Perhaps these tales of timber riches were on the mind of Theophilus Porterfield when he suddenly turned up in Seattle in November 1906.  He consulted a Seattle attorney, David McVay, to represent him as administrator of his property, the Porterfield’s Addition, a plat in Fremont.  Mr. Porterfield claimed that his son-in-law, Samuel Hauser, had appropriated the property and wouldn’t give it back to him. 

Mr. Porterfield, who was now 79 years old, had made the long journey by himself from Minneapolis to Seattle by train and had caught cold on the way.  Suddenly on November 30th he collapsed and died while visiting a friend on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.  Fortunately, the attorney, David McVay, had Mr. Porterfield’s background info and was able to contact Mrs. Porterfield in Minneapolis.   

The attorney’s search of property records showed that there never had been a transaction giving the Fremont property to Samuel Hauser, Porterfield’s son-in-law.  Over time, all the lots in the Porterfield plat in Fremont had already been sold, before Mr. Porterfield’s return visit to Seattle in 1906.  Perhaps when the money stopped coming in, Mr. Porterfield became confused and thought there was some fraud. 

The Seattle newspapers had printed the “fraud” story which Mr. Porterfield had told his contacts in Seattle. The newspaper then had to print a retraction, because Samuel Hauser wrote to the newspaper to deny any wrongdoing. He said that he wanted to clear his family’s name, as many of the Hausers still lived in Seattle. 

Today the Porterfield’s Addition in the northeast corner of Fremont still has many old houses, like 1109 North 47th Street.  This area of Fremont is still considered to be very convenient, but now it is because of access to major roadways of car travel like 50th & Stone Way, instead of streetcars. 

Sources:   

Genealogy resources including census, newspaper search and Find A Grave which includes biographical information: Theophilus Porterfield.   

HistoryLink Essay #8115, “James J. Hill,” by Paula Becker, 2007. 

HistoryLink Essay #7295, “Norton Clapp,” by Cassandra Tate, 2005. 

HistoryLink Essay #3285, “Woodland Park Railway begins running in 1890 (Guy Phinney),” by Greg Lange, 2001. 

Laird Norton company history. 

“Minneapolis Man Expires Suddenly,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 1, 1906, page 3.