(Click and click again to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 1, 2024
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 4, 2024
[Editor’s note: As expected, the storied Rosewood Manor in the unincorporated neighborhood of Esperance within the city of Edmonds was demolished Jan. 22-23, 2024. This column was written beforehand.]
By any other name, Rosewood Manor no longer smells sweet
By Clay Eals
By the time you read this, it might be gone.
These days, when the local development bulldozer is bustling 24/7, the “it” can be most anywhere. But today’s target stands (or stood) in the Esperance neighborhood, an unincorporated doughnut hole within the city of Edmonds.
The building’s name, the latest among several, is Rosewood Manor, a stately designation for this neglected 1915 mansion, reached via a circle driveway on the south side of busy 220th Street Southwest and surrounded by mid-20th-century homes, a wetland and tiny Chase Lake.
During its recent decay, passersby often speculated affectionately about its past personas. Today, thanks to Edmonds historian Brad Holden, its span of identities is close to definitive, from base to benevolent — each in its own way humanitarian.
A timeline of incarnations, from Holden’s research:
- A private home from 1915 to 1919, owned by builder Celdon Martin, co-owner of Sol Duc Hot Springs on the Olympic Peninsula. A debut housewarming party drew 50 couples, noted the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
- The White Horse Tavern through 1922. The name referenced a stallion that patrolled a pasture out back. Flowing alcohol and emanating ragtime-jazz music drew countless Prohibition-style police raids. In one incident, the owner shot an unruly customer with a pistol.
- Chase Lake Pavilion (a tavern) for much of 1922 to 1926, and Olympic Tavern through the mid-1930s.
- Chase Lake Sanitarium, reputedly a maternity hospital, starting in 1939.
- Charles Segal Sanitarium, offering addiction treatment, starting in 1951.
- Aurora Edmonds Nursing Home from 1961 to the mid-1990s, when it briefly housed Counterpoint Mental Health Services.
- Church of the Beloved, operated by a Christian fellowship group, starting roughly in 2000. The backyard’s elaborate garden hosted weddings and cookouts until 2012, when the site went up for sale.
- Full circle to a family home starting in 2016, but a kitchen fire soon made the space uninhabitable. Adamant Homes of Mill Creek bought it in October 2022.
Holden found no evidence to substantiate rumors that famed Hollywood dog Rin Tin Tin was buried on the site or that it served as a hunting lodge that drew a visit from President Theodore Roosevelt.
Adamant Homes won’t return press inquiries, but workers onsite told Holden in December that demolition was imminent. Permit documents cite plans to build 7 to 16 so-called single-family detached units there.
Instead, Holden, co-author of the 2022 book “Lost Roadhouses of Seattle,” hoped Rosewood Manor would be repurposed for low-cost housing or a museum. But he’s also realistic, sadly so: “It’s kind of a crude erasing of our history here.”
WEB EXTRAS
Thanks to architectural historian Larry Kreisman, Snohomish County planner Joshua Machen and especially Brad Holden for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals’ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
Below you also will find 1 additional video, 4 additional photos and, in chronological order, 5 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), and Washington Digital Newspapers, as well as other papers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.
In addition, here are MyEdmonds.com links related to this column:
