PAUL DORPAT

IN 1894, THE retail-wholesale druggist Henry Holmes and his wife, Kate, followed the increasingly fashionable move to the ridge overlooking Lake Washington. Their grand home was three houses north of Jackson Street on 30th Avenue South and, consequently, conveniently close to the Yesler Way Cable Railway. When the Holmeses moved in, the Leschi neighborhood was already clear-cut and the view east unimpeded. Now the lofty greenbelt of Frink Park partly obscures it.

The couple may have gotten a good price for the well-detailed, mansion-sized Victorian, whose tower rises here at the center of the scene, because of the nationwide financial crash the year before. The purchase may also have been speculative, since many of their neighbors expected that one day the ridge would be lined with hotels and apartments.

But the Holmeses stayed put and raised a family of four daughters and one son. As the children grew to maturity, they stayed on the block, building homes beside their parents and creating a kind of Holmes family compound. The larger modern bungalow in the foreground was built in 1910 (if you believe the tax records) for Ruth Holmes Huntoon and her lawyer husband, Richard, and they lived there for many decades. After the druggist and his wife both died in 1928, none of their children wanted to live in the ornate mansion of high ceilings and winter drafts, so it was razed in 1929.

A stand-alone showing of the old Holmes home is featured on page 116 of "Leschi Snaps," the third of Wade Vaughn's books on the neighborhood. The book can be purchased only at the Leschi Food Mart; proceeds all go to the Leschi Elementary School Children's Choir.

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