A Storey Worth Saving
In a restored 'white house,' the feel is entirely friendly
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 BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES When the house was rehabilitated, the deteriorated Corinthian columns were taken down, repaired and reglued, wrapped with fiberglass inside and made new. The capitals are replacements, but the contractor, Jim Docherty, located and purchased them from the same Chicago company that provided the originals. The firm still offered the same design, in modern materials, 100 years later.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Mary and Chuck Kastner enjoy a game of Monopoly on an early-19th-century English Regency mahogany card table they acquired from Masins. The Monopoly set belonged to Mary's mother. "Lizy" is a West Highland terrier sporting a Christmas collar with bells. The sunroom entry is in the background.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES The grand piano belonged to the previous owner, Jane Lyons, who lived in the house until she was 101 years old. Chuck and Mary are aficionados of history and were pleased to buy her 1890s piano and other objects when they purchased the house.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Cherubs on the radiator and leaded glass in the entry provide detailing that gives the house richness. All the radiators were sandblasted off-site and finished with coated powder for a durable, elegant surface.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES The golden hues of the tree decorations are a welcome greeting at the front entry. The mantle in the living room is not original, but added in the 1940s. Many, but not all, elements were restored to their original design when the house was rehabbed in 2003.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Corinthian columns and a two-story portico, or roofed entry porch, make for an imposing entrance to this Mount Baker home, built in 1907. The seasonal Christmas swags complement the symmetrical, neo-classical style. |
Passers-by gawk, architecture students study, and kids at Halloween do a double-take. "Is this the White House?" they ask.
Well, no. But stately white columns and a two-story roofed entry porch make it a plausible facsimile. "We found the house on the Internet, and fell in love with it," says Mary Kastner, who bought the house with husband Chuck about three years ago. When the house was built, in 1907, the Mount Baker neighborhood was newly annexed to Seattle, undeveloped and considered remote. The house, overlooking Lake Washington, was built to impress and attract people to Seattle's first planned residential community.
The home celebrates its 100th anniversary this year and was scheduled on the Mount Baker Home Tour earlier this month. Ellsworth Storey, one of Seattle's prominent early architects, designed the notable dwelling. While he's best known for small cottage homes with Chalet influences, here he can be seen trying his hand at a Georgian Classical Revival style. The symmetrical, neoclassical outside is imposing, and the inside is spacious though not nearly so grand. Windows are as wide as your outstretched hands, and the rooms are well-proportioned rectangles. Original details, like the highly modeled cornice moldings, still trill in the downstairs rooms. The floors are thin-stripped oak; leaded-glass doors separate the various rooms, adding elegance.
Amid this civilized setting, Chuck and Mary have created a settled-in feeling. Much of their furniture comes from parents and grandparents, or was purchased with the house. Both are scions of longtime Northwest families, and appreciate history; Chuck's grandfather founded the Majestic Bay theater in Ballard, and Mary's relatives started the first grocery in Port Angeles. So this older house fits them well, and their inherited chairs and tables fit the house.
The history of this old house
1907: Noted early-Seattle architect Ellsworth Storey designs the house in a style more typically seen in the South than Seattle. The house is bought by J.K. Gordon, who made his fortune as a miner.
1930s: The sunroom is added, destroying the exterior symmetry of the house; a sitting room wall is removed to make a 35-foot-long living room.
1940s: Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Lyons buy the home and remodel it. They also convert the third-floor attic to rooms.
2002: Mrs. Lyons passes away in the house at age 101. Lynn Bevis, who had been the caretaker, purchases the house, which was suffering from leaking water and pigeons that freely lived in the attic. The house is a tear-down in many a developer's eye, but Lyons spends two years bringing it back to life. She works with contractor Jim Docherty, who restores the beams in the dining room and leads the way with other restoration work. They uncover hidden details, like leaded glass in the master bathroom.
2005: Chuck and Mary Kastner buy the house.
"Everything in the house is old family things," says Chuck. The house was completely overhauled by the previous owner, who had been the caretaker for many years and lived in the neighborhood. A two-year project, she gutted the home and put it back together while preserving much of the original detailing and restoring some elements lost in remodels in the 1920s and '40s.
The floor plan stayed largely intact, with the exception of the kitchen, where three small, dark rooms were combined to make a single large one. By choosing cabinet styles and fixtures carefully, and using subway tile, the kitchen blends with the rest of the home. With the basement converted to use (9-foot-tall ceilings) and the third-floor attic space previously made into offices and bedrooms, the house totals 6,000 square feet and has five bathrooms.
At holiday time the Kastners enhance their home with Christmas trees crowded with family ornaments, including a formal tree in the entry and another in the sunroom. They also put decorated trees in each bedroom for the grown children who visit. There are seasonal objects d'art and their collection of nutcrackers.
And out comes the Monopoly set from 1935, the very same game Mary's mother used when she was a child. The family always sits down to play. Who gets the iron, who the race car? No need to fight: The Monopoly pieces of the era featured wooden pins of different colors, like elongated Hershey's Kisses, not the metal icons of later years.
David Berger is a Seattle writer. He can be reached at dab20@aol.com. Benjamin Benschneider is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.
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