Before Starbucks and Amazon, Seattle boasted the homes of some of the nation’s first
Millionaires.
Hi Everyone, Ken here, welcome to "ThisHouse" Today we are exploring Millionaire’s Row
in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
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Seattle started off as a small village, only having 2,000 residents in 1869.
When plans were announced by the Northern Pacific Railway Company to connect the region,
nearby Tacoma Washington was selected as the western terminus for the transcontinental
railroad.
This devastated the hardworking settlers of Seattle, they relentlessly petitioned the
railroad company to add a connecting line, and when the railroad company agreed, Seattle
saw its first boom.
Now, the area’s vast natural resources could be gathered and shipped across the country.
The people who owned the most land began chopping down the dense forests to create lumber yards,
creating thousands of jobs in the process.
By 1889, Seattle was gaining 1000 new residents per month and the small town of just a few
buildings had transformed into a bustling city with over 500 buildings in its business
district.
Then disaster struck, a fire raged, leveling nearly one quarter of the city, but the people
of Seattle weren’t deterred from growing their city.
They saw this as an opportunity to strategically plan the growth of their city by re designing
the streets, planning for parks, and adding street cars.
Thanks to the foresight in planning, Seattle was ready for its next wave of new residents
as the discovery of gold made headlines around the world.
Withing about 30 years, Seattle had gone from a modest village of 2000 people, to a booming
metropolis with 240,000 residents.
With the city being so crowded at this point, the wealthy elite began to search for a nearby
suburb where they could spread out on larger lots.
That’s when James A Moore began to plan what would become known as Millionaire’s
Row.
At the top of Capitol Hill, the entire area had been deforested by the booming lumber
yards, leaving vast empty spaces, prime for building.
To keep the riff raff out, James built Volunteer Parkway separated by planted medians to ensure
street cars would never be able to traverse the roads, then added a large gate near East
Roy Street.
Being so close to the city, yet tucked away on a private street, appealed to the city’s
wealthiest, and in no time at all, Seattle’s premier neighborhood was under construction.
Around the same time, The City Beautiful Movement was formed with the goal of creating a utopian
society through good urban planning and aesthetic parks.
Famously, the Olmstead Brothers, who headed the movement in Seattle, planned a series
of parks connected by walking paths, to surround Seattle which was dubbed the Emerald Necklace
with the shining crown jewel of that necklace to converge on Volunteers Parkway.
This section of the parks system was given the most thought, and the largest budget,
to create manicured gardens separated by paved paths encircling lily ponds and fountains.
Now that the utopian neighborhood dubbed Millionaire’s Row was completed, a walk down this idealistic
street would leave any one speechless.
The first house we will see is the Parker-Fersen Mansion.
This neoclassical mansion was built in 1908 for George Parker for the grand total of 100,000
dollars, or the modern day equivalent of about 3.3 million dollars.
He had emigrated to the US from Canada, working for United Wireless and Telegraph as a fiscal
agent.
His job was to sell shares in the speculative radio infrastructure that was yet to be built,
but he ended up embezzling about 20 percent of the company’s sales.
In 1911, he was tried and convicted for Stock Fraud, forcing the sale of his brand new mansion
filled with costly artwork and top of the line luxury automobiles.
The next house we will see was the Tudor Revival style mansion of Samuel Loeb, a beer baron
who owned breweries across the country.
He made a fortune selling Old German Lager style beers from Milwaukee to Tacoma, but
he feared his empire would come crashing down.
In 1917, talks of prohibition were beginning to make headway, and Samuel correctly predicted
that it would soon become law.
So he began liquidating his assets, including selling his house, then moved to San Francisco
with bags of cash to start a new life.
Next up is the house of lumber baron, Thomas Bordeaux.
It was designed to be a mix of the Tudor Revival and Queen Anne styles which is sometimes referred
to as Tudor Gothic.
Thomas had a fairly normal start to life after emigrating the US at the age of 20 years old.
He saved up money while working in the mines and started a very small lumber yard.
He had a good head for business and quickly grew his small business to become one of the
lumber barons.
He gained a great reputation in town and was appointed to the boards of several banks.
The small town where he originally started his lumber mill was renamed to Bordeaux, Washington
in his honor.
Of course, the very man who planned the exclusive enclave had his own mansion constructed here.
He hired architect, William D Kimball to design for him a modest, yet stately, brick home
with French renaissance influences.
The neighborhood was such a success, that James continued to develop areas of Seattle,
including several large buildings and theatres in downtown Seattle.
In doing so, he saw his net worth sky rocket to 15 million dollars, or the modern day equivalent
of nearly half a billion dollars.
He became one of the wealthiest men in the country, but only for a couple of years.
He ended up investing all of his money in a company town for Western Steel before they
were put under by US Steel.
Unable to afford Seattle, he moved purchased the cheapest land he could find in the nation,
the swamp lands of Florida’s everglades and slowly developed a new town called Moore
Haven.
He made a decent living in doing this, but a few years later a hurricane came through
and wiped out the town, leading to over 200 people drowning in their flooded homes.
Soon after, James passed away with only a few dollars left to his name.
The colorful lives of Seattle’s most elite were best portrayed in the homes they built
on Millionaire’s row, some were more humble than others, while some were bordering on
excess.
Unlike the Millionaire’s rows which once populated America’s great cities, Seattle’s
Millionaire’s Row never really saw a decline.
After the great depression, people continued to build in the neighborhood, eventually handing
over control of the street to the city and opening it up to the public.
The foresight of James Moore to plan for large streets with modern amenities coupled with
the utopian planning of the City Beautiful Movement created the perfect balance of infrastructure
to maintain the neighborhood’s appeal.
As the years went on, instead of houses being torn down, they were retrofitted with modern
conveniences such as electric, central air, and modern waste.
Today, the houses appear much as they did when they were first built with very few of
them being lost to time.
Traveling through the streets takes you on a journey back in time to one of the United
States only surviving Millionaire’s Rows.
Which house was your favorite?
Make sure to let me know down below in the comments section.
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