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By Jack Broom
Seattle Times staff reporter

For more than a century, Seattle residents have been living on local lakes and waterways, in one of the country's largest floating-home communities. Over the years, those accommodations have included everything from crude shanties on logs to modern-day homes so elaborate some even have basements — and at least one has hot water piped through its towel racks.

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES
	The colorful Lake Union houseboat of Blair Robbins and Bob Burk. The couple's floating home will be one of 15 on display at the 2002 Houseboat Tour Sept. 8.

Peaking in Depression: The number of floating homes topped 2,000 in the 1930s, with the need for cheap housing during the Depression. Today, there are 487, with the vast majority on Lake Union.

Star power: Few floating homes achieve fame, but an exception is a fancy, two-story number off Westlake Avenue North. It co-starred with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the 1993 hit movie "Sleepless in Seattle."

Romantic, not roomy: The late Tom Stockley, longtime floating-home dweller and Seattle Times wine columnist, quoted an old saying from the cramped quarters of houseboat country: "If you buy a new pair of shoes, you toss your old ones away."

Special fuel? During Prohibition, some houseboat dwellers were particularly receptive to visits from a young entrepreneur who made his rounds by boat. Ostensibly, he sold cedar bark to fuel wood stoves. But he also carried a more lucrative cargo ó liquor smuggled down from Canada. Howard Droker tells the story in "Seattle's Unsinkable Houseboats."