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Now & Then Paul Dorpat

Home For Visionaries

Soon the Seattle Art Museum will be opening its addition here at the southeast corner of First Avenue and Union Street, originally the site of the Arthur and Mary Denny home. The glass-faced skyscraper is the fourth structure to hold the block. Before it was the 1926 Rhodes Department Store building, which replaced the Arcade Annex, which took over the corner only after the Dennys' landmark residence was destroyed in 1907.

Doing community history amounts to getting lots of help from the community. Here we first thank Sue Champness, a Latimer family descendent, for this striking photograph of Arthur and Mary Denny's home. (The Latimers and Dennys were related.) Photographer Theodore Peiser probably recorded it soon after he arrived in Seattle about 1883. Six years later Peiser lost nearly everything to Seattle's "Great Fire" of 1889.

When it was built in 1866, this home crafted for the "father and mother of Seattle" was a fancy farmhouse quite remote from Seattle's business district. Seattle architectural historian Dennis Andersen uncovered the following quote in the July 9, 1866, copy of the Puget Sound Semi-Weekly: "Yesterday we were shown through the new residence of Hon. A.A. Denny, our delegate in Congress. It is an irregular, Gothic cottage, the plan of which was executed by Mr. S.B. Abbott . . . "

Andersen notes that the architect "likely used any one of a number of pattern book resources for his design . . . He may be the same Abbott who was accused of absconding with railroad construction payroll receipts a few years later. All must have been forgiven or at least forgotten, because he visited the city in 1901 and was interviewed in the P-I as a 'wealthy banker and oil man.' "

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.

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