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Puyallup Fish Hatchery

Status: Saved!

Year Listed: 2016

Location: Pierce County

Update: The Puyallup Fish Hatchery is now open to the public year-round during daylight hours. The onsite Educational Center is open on Saturdays from 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m., staffed by volunteers from the Puyallup Historical Hatchery Foundation. Learn more: https://www.cityofpuyallup.org/1204/Fish-Hatchery.

In 1946, the Washington State Department of Game, known today as the Department of Fish and Wildlife, acquired 160 acres of the Maplewood Springs Watershed in Puyallup. The goal: access to an abundant supply of clear spring water for the production of game fish. The ensuing hatchery complex, built in 1948, consists of a natural, gravity-fed water supply, various raceways, sixteen round ponds, an incubation building, a shop building, and residences for operators. The design of the main building is hybrid in nature as it takes cues from public structures built during the late 1930s and more modern, post-WWII era construction methods and materials. The facility continues to remain in active use, but is slated to be converted to meet a need for more salmon production. Local advocates are concerned the National Register listed complex will be adversely impacted by the changes needed for the impending conversion. The project offers a unique adaptive re-use opportunity, however, and the opportunity for much needed improvements: the facility overall needs substantial repair and efficiency upgrades. The Department of Fish & Wildlife has expressed optimism that a thoughtful rehabilitation will result in an updated facility that retains its historic character while meeting agency needs for salmon production. Agency officials understand the educational and historic importance of the hatchery and are engaging with the community and other concerned parties in order to ensure positive outcomes for the historic complex.

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Enloe Dam Powerhouse

Status: Most Endangered Places

Year Listed: 2016

Location: Oroville, Okanogan County

The gold rush spurred early pioneer settlement of the Okanogan River Basin, but after 1914 the area increasingly turned to agriculture given the railroad’s ability to provide efficient and reliable transportation of goods. The Enloe Powerhouse and Dam were built in 1922 to meet the electricity demands of the local mining industry and an increasing population. With the improved infrastructure, the new dam greatly contributed to the extensive growth of the Okanogan Valley. The dam and powerhouse operated until 1958, at which point the Bonneville Power Administration transmission lines reached the area, providing electricity from the Columbia River.

In 2016, the Okanogan County Public Utility District released a solicitation seeking a party interested in taking over ownership of the Enloe Dam Powerhouse. Qualified applicants need to “demonstrate capacity and capability to adapt and utilize the facility for recreational, historical, and/or community use,” with an emphasis on “historical” given the powerhouse’s listing in the National Register of Historic Places. While the powerhouse is remote and in disrepair, it does afford the opportunity to tap into tourism and recreational activities for which the Okanogan Valley is known including fishing, hiking, wine tasting, and visitation to other historic sites nearby.

The property poses an adaptive use challenge—to say the least—but the potential payoff for a creative solution is enormous!

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LaCrosse Rock Houses and Station

Status: Most Endangered Places

Year Listed: 2016

Location: La Crosse, Whitman County

Local businessman Clint Dobson is credited with building the unique collection of structures known as the LaCrosse rock houses and station between 1934 and 1936. The project included three houses, three cabins, and a service station with all buildings prominently featuring basalt stones collected from the surrounding fields. Dobson was not a master stone mason, rather, basalt stone was the most readily available material in the area during the Great Depression.

Local farm hands, workers, and railroad crews used the houses and cabins as rental units, while the station offered a service and repair shop. Although the structures have not been in use since the 1960s, amazingly all but one of the houses remain. Those remaining buildings, however, are in critical danger of collapse if they do not receive repairs to stabilize and secure the stone and structural elements.

Hope for rehabilitation increased when a local family gifted the property to LaCrosse Community Pride, which enjoys a strong track record of successful community development projects in town. Following the closure of the town’s only grocery store, LaCrosse Community Pride embarked on an effort to re-invent that site as an ongoing enterprise and community center. Today, the building houses a new grocery store, the local library, a community meeting space, and two rentable office spaces. The group also organized efforts to return a bank to the town when the local branch closed: they purchased the bank building, secured a new tenant to run the bank, and are currently working to find another tenant for the adjacent café.

The Washington Trust was proud to support LaCrosse Community Pride in rebuilding one of the stone cabins through a Valerie Sivinski Fund grant. Now they are fundraising for the rehabilitation of the remaining buildings and just last month were recommended to receive a state Heritage Capital Grant to realize their vision of creating a heritage museum and Ice Age floods center in the service station along with places for visitors to stay in the homes and bunkhouses.

Buchanan House (Trueblood House)

Status: Saved!

Year Listed: 2016

Location: King County

In 1886, a British steel tycoon named Peter Kirk envisioned a “Pittsburgh of the West” to be established in the area he incorporated as Kirkland. Attempting to turn this vision into reality, the Kirkland Land and Improvement Company constructed 8 homes in 1889. One of these 8, the Buchanan House, differs from the other residences: while seven of the homes were built for steel mill executives in the West of Market area, the Buchanan House sat East of Market and, based on newspaper records, was built for Doctor William Buchanan, Kirkland’s first physician. A second physician, Doctor Barclay Trueblood, took up residence in 1907.

The Buchanan House is one of very few early residential structures remaining able to represent the founding history of Kirkland. The Buchanan House is an excellent example of the wood-frame English Mill Town architecture present in Kirkland due to Peter Kirk’s influence. While Kirk’s plan to create a center of steel production never materialized, the area grew in population as other industries developed including wool production and shipbuilding. By the midtwentieth century, construction of floating bridges across Lake Washington made Kirkland a popular bedroom community for urban commuters to Seattle.

Kirkland remains a popular residential city, yet due to dramatic regional economic growth and an associated spike in land values, smaller, historic houses increasingly fall victim to the teardown trend. The current owners of the Buchanan House planned to build a new, larger residence on the property, but supported relocation of the structure to a new site. In 2016, the house was moved to a nearby parking lot to await a party willing to acquire the house, and hopefully keep it in Kirkland.

Saved!

The house was recently purchased by Kim and Dan Hartman, and on August 15, 2017 it was moved to its permanent new home on Sixth Avenue in the Norkirk neighborhood of Kirkland. A huge thanks to Nickel Bros for making the move possible, to Kim and Dan Hartman for recognizing how special this house is, and to the many, many advocates who put time and effort into making sure we did not lose this one!

News coverage of the move:

King5 – Historic Kirkland house moved to new home (video)

Kirkland Reporter – Historic Kirkland house to move to permanent location

The Seattle Times – On the move in Kirkland (slideshow)

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Dvorak Barn

Status: Saved!

Year Listed: 2016

Location: King County

The Dvorak Barn in Kent hearkens to the city’s early years when the area was home to a significant farming community. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Kent got its start raising potatoes, onions, and hops, expanding with lettuce, eggs, dairy, and poultry after the turn of the twentieth century. The damming of the Green River in 1962 and the completion of Interstate 5 in 1966 played pivotal roles in transforming Kent from a farming community to the industrial center it is today. While farming activity remains present in the Kent Valley, many of the historic resources representing the area’s agricultural heritage have been lost. The Dvorak Farmstead is one of these resources. Established along the banks of the Green River with the construction of a farmhouse in 1906, the iconic barn was built two decades later in 1925. The City of Kent is embarking on the Green River Levee Improvement Program, requiring construction of a levee directly through the Dvorak Farmstead site.

Although the farmhouse and several outbuildings all need to be removed, the barn retains the most integrity and is the priority for local supporters who hope to relocate the structure and find a new community use. The City of Kent and King County have initiated discussions related to the barn as part of the Section 106 process. While Section 106 has yet to be formally instituted, advocates feel this will happen soon given that the levy project prompting removal of the barn and surrounding farmstead requires a federal permit from FEMA.

See Saved Story: https://www.kentreporter.com/news/city-of-kent-plans-to-move-historic-dvorak-barn-to-save-it/

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Providence Heights College

Status: Lost

Year Listed: 2016

Location: King County

The Providence Heights College and Provincialate was founded in 1961 as a response to the Sister Formation Conference. Started in the 1950s, the Conference initiated an inter-congregational effort to promote college education for sisters, enhancing the professional lives of religious women. Providence Heights College was one of only two institutions in the nation established at that time specifically for this purpose. The National Register-eligible campus represents the volatile time period in the Catholic Church when a crisis ensued over a new theology of authority and obedience among American sisters that collided with older, more traditional theological interpretations.

Completed in 1961, the Providence Heights College campus was designed by John Maloney, a prominent regional architect. Purposefully situated within a secluded wooded area on the Sammamish Plateau, its buildings total roughly 210,000 square feet and include classrooms, administrative offices, dormitories, an auditorium, a cafeteria, a library, a pool, a gym, and a chapel. The chapel is a remarkable modernist interpretation of Gothic design elements with fourteen steeply pitched gabled clerestory windows created by Gabriel Loire, a world-renowned stained glass artist.

The integration of religious education with secular student populations coupled with declining numbers of women entering the religious community led to Providence Heights College closing in 1969. The Sisters sold the property in the late 1970s to the Lutheran Bible Institute, later known as Trinity Lutheran College. The subsequent owner, City Church, purchased the complex in 2004 and initiated plans to build 140+ single family homes. The developer’s plan originally sparked the property’s nomination to the Most Endangered List, but the Issaquah School Board then voted unanimously to use eminent domain to acquire the site for a new high school and a new elementary school. Because the school district did not plan to reuse the buildings, the eminent domain process was put on hold while the owner pursued demolition.

A wide network of supporters were eager to preserve this significant piece of the area’s history and reuse the buildings in their original configuration. The Sammamish Heritage Society partnered with the Washington Trust to submit a landmark nomination, and while the campus was designated, the owner filed a lawsuit in opposition. Local advocates campaigned to save the campus and filed legal appeals against the owner’s application for a demolition permit. Sadly, in 2018 advocates lost the legal battle and the campus was demolished.


Read the Providence Heights landmark nomination, submitted by the Sammamish Heritage Society: text and photos.

Learn more: Providence Heights in the News.

 

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Old Woodinville School

Status: Saved!

Year Listed: 2016

Location: King County

Location: Woodinville, King County

Everyone in Woodinville knows where the school is – the site has held an educational facility since construction of the first wood-frame schoolhouse in 1892. The first building was relocated to the back of the district-owned lot when a new, two-room school took its place in 1902, and a subsequent fire prompted the construction of a brick, ‘fireproof’ school in 1909. Funding through the Works Progress Administration led to expansion of the brick structure in the 1930s with a final remodel occurring in 1948 when architect Fred B. Stephen delivered on an effort to balance the façade. The 1948 building is an example of “stripped classicism” that combines the symmetry and formality of Beaux-Arts classicism with the sparseness and controlled detailing drawn from European Modernism.

After nearly a century serving Woodinville students, the school district mothballed the building in the 1980s. Following incorporation, the newly formed City of Woodinville moved into the building, eventually purchasing the site from the district. But with a new City Hall constructed on the property in 2001, the historic school closed once again. Local community members were hopeful at first that the city would rehabilitate the old school, but a decade of false starts have deflated those hopes.

Since 2005, the city has pursued public/private partnership opportunities for the rehabilitation of the school, conducting feasibility studies and issuing requests for proposals. Many in the community felt the most recent proposal to convert the property into a brewery and boutique hotel offered the best option to date, but it failed to gain the needed city council support. While the city continues to seek ideas for re-use, supporters fear “demolition by neglect” will soon make any rehabilitation project unrealistic

See Saved Story: https://www.theschoolhousedistrict.com/