Seattle’s 10 Greatest Homes

Stimson-Green Residence

Architect: Kirtland Cutter

1204 Minor Avenue, First Hill

Year Built: 1899–1901

Stimson-Green Residence, 1899–1901

Like most architects of his time, Kirtland Cutter maintained a wardrobe of picturesque styles that he rotated, project to project, and frequently mixed in the same building (with mixed results). For Seattle timber magnate C. D. Stimson, Cutter selected the half-timbered Tudor style that looked far back to medieval England, but was just beginning a popular revival in the United States. Outside, the 10,000-square-foot mansion’s bulk is broken down by the delicate geometry of porches, dormers, and window bays. Inside is a cavalcade of fine millwork and exotic theme decoration, all the way up to lions and dragons guarding the living room fireplace.

Its First Hill neighborhood was the first “suburban” retreat from downtown Seattle for the city’s wealthy, but its 40-odd mansions were razed surprisingly quickly in favor of hospitals and high-rise apartments. Stimson-Green is one of a bare handful to survive into the twenty-first century. The Joshua Green family kept it as a private residence until 1975, after which it passed through the hands of Historic Seattle and the Stimsons’ granddaughter Patsy Collins, then finally to the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation. Many rooms remain in near-original condition, and the house is open by appointment for tours and events.

Pierre Ferry Residence

Architects: John Graham Sr. and Alfred Bodley

Capitol Hill

Year Built: 1904–07

Pierre Ferry Residence, 1904–07

The Arts and Crafts movement arose in England in the late nineteenth century in reaction to anonymous, mass-produced goods of indifferent quality—sound familiar? It migrated to the Pacific Northwest in the early twentieth century, finding expression in a wide range of handcrafted home furnishings, decorations, and architecture. Seattle’s wealth of bungalows arose out of the Arts and Crafts movement, and so did a few of its mansions.

For the Pierre Ferry residence, British-born architect John Graham Sr. fashioned a stucco-clad exterior inspired by the English country manors of Charles Voysey and Baillie Scott. For the interior, Alfred Bodley, who briefly associated with Graham, commissioned a swarm of craftsmen to execute fine details such as an iridescent glass-mosaic fireplace surround and intricate hand-carved woodwork. Graham went on to bigger things, literally—he designed many of downtown Seattle’s most important commercial buildings. But the Ferry residence, still maintained as a private home, is considered the finest expression of the Arts and Crafts philosophy in the city.

Ellsworth Storey Houses

Architect: Ellsworth Storey

Madrona

Year Built: 1903–05

Ellsworth Storey Houses, 1903–05, interior

Very little architecture in early-twentieth-century Seattle wore any regional character or personal imprint of the designer. It was a masked ball of standardized revival styles: a Tudor on this corner, neoclassical over there. But one architect, Ellsworth Storey, newly arrived from Chicago in 1903, demonstrated an embryonic direction with his first work in his adopted city.

Storey designed this pair of houses in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood for himself and his parents, and they look like none of their contemporaries. Storey had taken the Grand Tour of Europe, and there’s an obvious echo of Swiss chalet in these houses—but it’s stripped down, desentimentalized, modernized. There’s also a tingle of the Prairie style that Frank Lloyd Wright was then exploring, and a touch of the Arts and Crafts movement. Storey was trying to integrate all these into a regional vocabulary. We can also read his interest in a Seattle-appropriate architecture in the all-native wood, river rock, and generous window area, luring in a lot of the reluctant winter light.

Storey never took the radical path out of the historical vocabulary that these first houses suggested he might, but his work continued to be more personalized and creative than most of his contemporaries. He was Seattle’s first regionalist.

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Published: January 2012