A 1901-era, three-story apartment building at 1411 Boylston Ave nominated for protections in January will move ahead with a meeting on designating the property as an official landmark Wednesday afternoon.
Possible protections for the so-called Belmont-Boylston “double house” are coming as Historic Seattle prepares to sell the property it renovated after purchasing a swath in the area in 1989.
“Designed by the architecture firm of Josenhans and Allan, 1411 Boylston was built as a two-family dwelling at a cost of $6,500.19 It was distinguished as a ‘double house,’ divided vertically with the plan of each half-house mirroring that of the other. Each half had nine rooms,” the nomination (PDF) reads. “Hambach used Colonial detailing to further distinguish the building, including Palladian windows and clustered Tuscan columns.”
You can learn more about Wednesday’s 3:30 PM landmarks board meeting (PDF) here.
Meanwhile, another landmarks board session in March will consider the nomination of the latest property on Capitol Hill’s Millionaire’s Row to be put up for landmark status. CHS reported here on the Burwell House and its owners’ hopes the 1904-built 14th Ave E house will be deemed worthy to advance in the landmarks process.
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So….it’s a duplex.
It was a duplex. It a bunch of apartments these days.
Gave a read through the nomination document, lots of really odd language and hand waving trying to whitewash a lot of history. Also, this was an odd sentence with no context as to why it’s mentioned that Olmsted is white.
“In 1903, John Charles Olmsted, a White landscape architect and a founder of the Olmsted Brothers firm, identified Fourteenth Avenue East as the primary entry to Volunteer Park and designed a broad, curving concourse in the park to be a northern continuation of Millionaire’s Row.”
Although he was a segregationist, it’s not mentioned anywhere, and his race is mentioned elsewhere. The only other mentions of race in the neighborhood are the help and three families that were allowed to live nearby. Although the footnotes show that the source for that is a special article on 1909 and then the paragraph goes on to mention that “by 1909 racism against Blacks had increased in the city. Real estate agent Daniel Jones went to court, arguing unsuccessfully that the Caytons reduced the value of nearby property, The Seattle Republican began to struggle, and the Caytons were forced to rent their family home.”
This whole thing reads like such a slap in the face, whitewashing our history once more. The millionaires row group needs to have a long look in the mirror and think about what they are celebrating and how they want to frame it.
Oops, I meant to say I was talking about the Burwell Manson in that other comment, not the duplex-turned apartment museum of our failed response to housing that is the Bel-Boy…
How do we let people live in this masterpiece. It should be preserved as a museum for all to enjoy its mighty splendor.
We have a housing crisis my guy
but look upon this masterpiece! can we please please please ensure that no development happens around it for five blocks in any direction to keep shadows off of it?
There are already multiple developments surrounding this building. What are you even trying to say?
This building is already a 17-unit low income apartment building. Are you suggesting we tear it down and kick these tenants out during a housing crisis to replace them with tech workers?