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All In The Families

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COURTESY OF SW SEATTLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND LOG HOUSE MUSEUM THEN: The Hainsworth home in West Seattle on 46th Avenue Southwest, north of Massachusetts Street, is certainly one of the oldest residences in Seattle. PAUL DORPAT NOW: Although it has been added onto over the years, the home is still distinguished. Richard and Holly Grambihler, the present owners, are pleased to point out how the strange variation in the number of panes in the two front second-floor bedroom windows survives. On the left the pattern is four up and four wide. On the right it is four up and three wide.

THIS WEEK AND next we'll feature two William Hainsworth homes. Here is the Victorian manse that belonged to William Henry Hainsworth II on 46th Avenue Southwest overlooking Puget Sound. Next it will be "William the Third's" home on Southwest Olga Street overlooking Elliott Bay and Seattle. Both distinguished residences survive on the West Seattle plateau, although their neighborhoods are separated by one of the most enchanted natural features of Seattle, the Fairmount Ravine.

William and Mary Hainsworth, their daughter, Betsy, and two sons, Will III and John, moved to the West Seattle plateau in 1889. Then, according to Will III's brother-in-law, Arthur Stretch, it was still "covered with second-growth timber and brush." Both the Stretch and Hainsworth families lived on what the West Seattle Land and Improvement Co. named Columbia Street. Arthur Stretch's father, Richard, was the engineer who laid it out. The name was changed to 46th when West Seattle was annexed to Seattle in 1907. The fathers of both families were English immigrants and, by Arthur's accounting, theirs were the first two families to settle the area. The families were very close; Will III married Arthur's sister, Florence.

The 57-year-old Will II moved to West Seattle directly from Pittsburgh, where he had considerable success building a steel foundry. Hainsworth opened a new foundry in Ballard. It might have taken awhile then to get between Ballard and West Seattle, but not forever. The San Francisco-based developers that promoted the West Seattle plateau outfitted it with cable cars and an eight-minute ferry ride to Seattle.

The book "The West Side Story" has much more about the two families and the early years of life on the plateau.

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