When new in 1909, the L'Amourita apartments at the northwest corner of Franklin Avenue and Shelby Street were a unique Northwest example of East Coast townhouse living built in a Southwest style. Recently painted, this concrete apartment house has been a cooperative since the 1950s.

Residents have mostly gotten used to the clatter, especially from the express lanes, that manages to break in. Grace Hitchman has lived in one of the apartments for 23 years and has slept soundly except when the traffic stops. Then she wakes up.

Since the 1950s, the building has been a cooperative run by a board of tenants. Over the years, the story of its origins has several versions. Costi Parvulescu, a member of the co-op's board, shared one: "The story goes that a Portuguese farmer built L'Amourita and kept adding sections as he got more daughters."

This has a grain of truth. An investments speculator named Adolph J. Jarmuth built L'Amourita whole-piece and lived with his family in its first apartment at the corner of Franklin Avenue and Shelby Street for the first two years only. In the beginning there were only eight apartments, described in The Seattle Times then as "divided by concrete walls and having from seven to nine rooms." The building, said The Times, was "the first of its kind in Seattle."

With exterior concrete walls 22 inches thick, L'Amourita was built nearly for eternity. "I think most of Seattle has lived here at one point," says present board president Lysa Hansen.

Paul Dorpat's two-hour videotape on Seattle's early history, "Seattle Chronicle," is $29.95 from Tartu Publications, P.O. Box 85208, Seattle, WA 98145.