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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 30, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on May 3, 2026
Whose feet have walked your floors? Bill Schrier can supply clues
By Clay Eals
It’s easy to imagine that where we live begins and ends with us. Bill Schrier is proving otherwise.
By assembling an illustrated history of his house in West Seattle’s north Admiral neighborhood, he’s setting a potent and universal example.
For nearly a half-century, Schrier and his family have lived there. He easily places their $65,500 purchase to November 1978 because it came just six months after a gypsum freighter infamously rammed the low-level Spokane Street Bridge, prompting construction of today’s high-level West Seattle Bridge.
But the house was hardly new. It had been built to its present size between 1908 and 1910, just after West Seattle’s 1907 annexation to Seattle. It stands on a typically quiet, wooded street so narrow that when cars line both sides, drivers from opposite ends take turns squeezing through.
Though appearing smaller, the “Plain Early”-style structure has three floors, including a daylight basement, encompassing six bedrooms, two kitchens and two dining rooms. Over the years, the house was remodeled inside and out.
What intrigues Schrier more is whose feet once walked its floors. A sampling of inhabitants:
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THEN: Engineer-surveyor Richard Stretch, who laid out the street grid for northern West Seattle, is shown in an 80th-birthday Seattle Times profile June 30, 1918. Schrier’s research indicates that Stretch owned the property from 1890 until 1908 and may have built a portion of the house during that time. (Webster & Stevens, Seattle Times online archive) Millard F. Mitchell, a self-described farmer, bought the in-progress home from noted engineer-surveyor Richard Stretch and lived there through 1914, with his wife, Jennie, and five children.
- Stanton Patton, second director of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in the 1930s, was married there in 1914.
- Edmund Bourdage Sr. and Jr. lived there in the 1930s, both later serving in law enforcement, the dad as a county sheriff’s deputy and the son as police chief in Longview.
- Ray Gerring, regional artist and community-college teacher whose paintings can still be found online, rented the house’s basement unit in the 1950s.
These particulars and countless others derive from city, county and state records, newspaper archives and genealogical data uncovered by Schrier, a former police officer and retired government official who for nine years directed 200 staff as Seattle’s chief technology officer. Aiding his eye for detail is his wife, Kathy, a longtime public high-school journalism teacher who directs the Washington Journalism Education Association.
“I’ve always been curious and fascinated by what things must have been like,” he says. “There’s satisfaction in understanding our place in history. Scratching that itch of fascination gives me pleasure.”
So far, Schrier’s project, which still awaits his family’s own saga, tops 40 pages. The book’s specifics provide a roadmap for tapping readily available information that is normally invisible.
Though he allows that his book might hold wider interest, Schrier mainly wants to pass it to whoever owns the house next.
And who knows? The next owner may add another chapter.
WEB EXTRAS
Big thanks to Bill Schrier and his family 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 while hearing this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
Below, you will find a downloadable pdf of Schrier’s book (a work in progress), 3 additional photos, and 11 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.
