(click to enlarge photos)
By the estimable authority of Diana James, the Comet Apartments, this Sunday’s subject at the First Hill corner of Spruce Street and 11th Avenue, is a solid example of a building form she calls “Seattle-Centric.” In “Shared Walls,” her book history of our city’s apartment houses, James explains, “Driving or walking through Seattle neighborhoods that have concentrations of apartment buildings, one is struck by the repetition of a particular form, best described as rectangular or square in shape and featuring at least one bay on either side of a centrally located and recessed opening at each floor above the entrance. Variations on this theme exist in every Seattle neighborhood.”
By another authority, King County tax records, organized in the late 1930s by the depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Comet (its original name) was built in 1910 with twenty-eight apartments. Seven of these were fit with four rooms, and the rest with three. West and Wheeler, the Comet’s real estate agent, described it in The Seattle Times “Apt Unclassified” listings for March 4, 1912, as “an unusually attractive building.” We still agree.
The Comet’s 1912 classified packed a terse list of its qualities, including “large light rooms,” “very reasonable rates (twenty to thirty dollars),” and the unnamed but “usually up-to-date apt. house conveniences.” The Comet was also in a “paved district” that was conveniently in “walking distance.” Surely these First Hill apartments were within a reasonable stroll of nearly every necessity. Pacific Grade School was three blocks north on 11th at Jefferson Street, and professional baseball, a mere two blocks away at the Seattle Athletic Field. (see below) If walking was not wanted, the Comet was surrounded by common carriers, including the trollies on Broadway and 12th Avenues and the cable cars on James Street and Yesler Way. For the mostly downhill three-quarters of a mile trip to Pioneer Square, a brisk step might get there almost as quickly as a ride on the famously rattling cable cars.
On November 21, 1938, the Comet – by then the Star, the name that stuck – was enrolled on the year’s list of victims of the nearly sixty apartments and homes visited in the night by the then best-known – as yet unnamed and uncaught – person in Seattle: a firebug. Of the four apartments – three on First Hill – ignited “by a pyromaniac” that early morning, the city’s fire Chief William Fitzgerald described the Star’s as “the most successful.” It was set in a dumb-waiter shaft, did $2,000 damage and “routed 100 persons from their beds at 3:30 in the morning.” Addressing the city – especially the residents of First Hill – the fire chief asked for “intelligent assistance” rather than “mass hysteria.” The fire chief may have also had Police Chief William Sears in mind, who earlier had let it out that he “feared a catastrophe if the firebug is not apprehended.”
(The fire bugs – two of them during the Great Depression – left an impressive paper trail in the local press. An industrious historian might consider telling this story while using the very handy and almost omnipresent tax photos of the victims, of which very few were burned to the ground.)
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? Rob? Diana? Sure Jean. Rob has pulled a number of past blog features that “approach” this week’s subject on the southeast corner of First Hill. Again, because these links are often packed with other features they may also approach other corners or even hills. At the bottom we will add the Pacific Mag. clipping with the story about Dugdale Park (the first one) aka the Yesler Athletic Field at 12th and Yesler. These feature local baseball historian Dan Eskenazi and are used with his courtesy and with the repeat your Nikon Jean. Turning now to you dear reader, please explore these links. The first one features the pie-shaped Sprague Hotel in the original flat-iron block nestled between Spruce and Yesler, and then reformed as part of Yesler Terrace. You may wish to also key-word “Yesler Terrace” in the search box above. As you know Jean, Diana does not have a key to this inner sanctum, only to hearts and minds, your’s and mine.,
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MEANWHILE AND NEARBY – MORE BILLBOARD PORTRAITS FROM THE FOSTER-KLEISER COLLECTION
Greetings! I lived in the Star Apartment building for 23 years, 1985-2008, and thought you’d be interested to know that it was built by George Washington Carmack and his second wife, Marguerite, with Klondike gold rush money. Here is a quote from p. 158 of the book “George Carmack, Man of Mystery Who Set Off the Klondike Gold Rush” by James Albert Johnson:
“Late in 1909, Carmack and his wife decided to build a large apartment building at 170 Eleventh Avenue, only a few blocks from their new home, to be known as the Carmack Apartments. The plans called for a four-story building divided into 29 apartments, 110 rooms in all. Marguerite bossed the construction job while Carmack busied himself with his mine.”
The architect was Victor Voorhees, who designed many Seattle houses and buildings in the early 1900s:
http://www.antiquehomestyle.com/plans/voorhees/index.htm
The Seattle Public Library holds several of Voorhees’ “Western Home Builder” catalogs in its collection.
I suspect the name change to “Comet Apartments” can be attributed to Halley’s Comet, which made one of its naked-eye-view appearances in April of 1910.
Paul, I appreciate the posting of the photograph of The Gables Apartments. When my wife and I were young we lived there in 1972-3. Our front window is down the central court, just right of the main entry. We used to hang out at Horizon Books and in the U District. I was maced and arrested at the latter location. I’m pretty sure I ran into you and Walt on several occasions, but my memory of those days is kind of foggy. Steve Emerson, former History Link contributor.
semerson@ewu.edu.