The little palace of Victorian domesticity that Herman and Katherine Bagley built in the 1880s at the northeast corner of Spring Street and Fourth Avenue was razed in 1903. It was replaced by the much larger James McNaught mansion, which was moved across Spring Street to make way for the Seattle Carnegie Library. Later, this corner was filled with the Hotel Hungerford, recently reincarnated as the Pacific Plaza Hotel (below, right).

	PAUL DORPAT

Katherine Sweet and Herman Bagley were 19 when they married in Michigan in 1864. In four years Herman had his homeopathic degree and in four years more a surgery professorship at the Michigan Medical College in Lansing. This they gave up for Seattle in 1875.

Here, Herman rapidly became one of the community's core of brilliant boomers, and in 1879 he was rewarded with a seat on the City Council. Bagley was as prescient in real estate as he was in medicine, and his fortunes grew. Sometime in the 1880s he and Kitty moved into this home at the northeast corner of Spring Street and Fourth Avenue. In the 1890s, they purchased 600 acres bordering the Black River. There, to quote a 1903 biographical sketch, "they lived very happily, surrounded by beautiful scenery and enjoying all the comforts that go to make life worth the living" — until Feb. 8, 1899, when the physician died too suddenly to cure himself. They had no children.

Two years later, the 57-year-old Katherine married the vital 75-year-old colonel. Glenn was a retired manufacturer from Minnesota and a popular Democrat in what was then its Republican metropolis. He came within 137 votes of being the mayor of Minneapolis. They lived 22 years looking down on Renton, the Green River Valley and, after 1916, a dry Black River channel. That year, the river was drained when Lake Washington was lowered to complete the Ship Canal. Part of the Renton property was developed into the Earlington Golf Course.

Vol. 1 and Vol. 3 of Paul Dorpat's books, "Seattle Now and Then" are $19.95 each from Tartu Publications, P.O. Box 85208, Seattle, WA 98145.