Hello, I am Eugenia Woo, Director of Preservation Services at Historic
Seattle. I've been with the organization
since 2009, leading its preservation
advocacy program.
Seattle's built environment has changed
a lot in the past decade or so. It seems
like every week you go by a block and
there's another hole in the ground.
Nothing remains of what was once there.
Our collective memory fades. What was
there?Are we all doomed to cultural
amnesia or is there still hope to save
Seattle's soul, or a piece of it anyway?
This is a tale of two landmarks in
Seattle and the community advocacy
efforts to save them, both located on
Capitol Hill - a dense urban neighborhood
near downtown characterized by a mix of
older housing stock, including
single-family homes and apartment
buildings from different eras and
representative of different
architectural styles. Increasingly, this
community, along with many other Seattle
neighborhoods, has been experiencing
major development pressure for years - particularly during the city's current
speculative building boom as they built
out an already dense historic neighborhood
there are a few ways to add housing
units without demolishing or drastically
altering what's existing. Building
community doesn't have to be a zero-sum
game pitting housing against preservation.
It's not "either/or," it's "both and." Let's
take a closer look at our two landmarks
and the advocacy efforts to save them. First up is the Roy Vue Apartments. At first
glance the Roy Vue may not seem that
different from the scores of other 1920s
brick apartment buildings on the Hill,
but it doesn't take long to see that
it's a unique building worthy of its
landmark status. Constructed in 1924, the
Roy Vue Garden Apartments, as it was
originally known, was developed by
father and son Willis and Guy Bergman. They hired Seattle architect Charles
Lyman Haynes to design the apartment
building and prolific builder Hans
Pederson as the contractor.
The landscape was installed and designed
by Malmo & Company. Taking up almost an
entire block on Bellevue Avenue East
between East Roy Street and East Mercer
Street, the three-story building contains
34 units consisting of spacious one and
two-bedroom apartments that are over
1,000 square feet. Advertisements from the 1920s indicate
that the Roy Vue was designed as
higher-end apartments offering some of
the features of single-family homes with
the convenience of being close to the
downtown core. All the apartments are
bright with generous windows offering
exposure on multiple sides and views into
the courtyard. This was accomplished by
designing a building without corridors. When the Roy Vue was completed in
November 1924 the neighborhood was
already a built-out residential district.
In 1901, Pike Street was
regraded - allowing easy access to
downtown for the first time from several
areas of Capitol Hill. New streetcar
connections on Pike facilitated rapid
development of Capitol Hill. The summit
line was built in 1907. The Roy Vue
Garden Apartments were located near the
turnaround point at Belmont of the Belmont-Summit streetcar line. In addition, the
transit line helped in the development
of a mix of small-scale commercial uses
to serve the neighborhood. While the
streetcar is gone, a community of dense,
low-scale and often high-quality
apartment buildings remains along its
route. The Roy Vue was a key part of
this community and was featured in local
newspapers around the time of
construction. The building was well
documented, making it easier for us to
understand its significance
when Roy Vue was new and how its
importance has evolved over time. Today,
just like when it was originally built,
residents and visitors enter the Roy Vue
through the main arched entry,
walking through the arcade which then
opens up into a secret garden,
surprising first-time visitors and
delighting residents every time they
arrive home. The Roy Vue's historic
courtyard garden features mature
plantings and integrity of original
landscape design. It is also unique
because of the privacy it offers
residents. At the same time, the design
promotes also the opportunities for
residents to connect with each other. Other courtyard buildings in Seattle are
street-facing, in which the courtyard is
fully visible to passers-by. Generations
of Roy Vue residents and community
members have appreciated the Roy Vue
and the gracious living it offers to
urban dwellers. This home is about
valuing place, not real estate. It is in
this context in which a grassroots
preservation advocacy effort was formed.
In spring of 2018,
concerned residents and community
members contacted Historic Seattle
because they got wind of plans that a
developer was interested in purchasing
the Roy Vue with an intent to gut the
interior and build an addition in the
courtyard, effectively destroying
interior features and the historic
landscape - turning a 34-unit apartment
building in to 147 micro-units. Only the
facade would remain. What happened next
was a coming together of community bound
by a belief that a place as
historic and well-designed as the Roy
Vue, that has provided a wonderful home
for generations of urban dwellers, should
not be so severely altered as to render
it unlivable or undesirable - and
not actually affordable. The effort to
save the Roy Vue became a case study
in effective preservation advocacy and
community engagement. Early on, Historic
Seattle staff and Capitol Hill
Historical Society board members met
with a group of over 20 residents and
community members at Harry's Fine Foods,
the neighborhood bar and restaurant
located next door to the Roy Vue. The
two questions that everyone had at the
meeting were: how can we save the Roy
View and what can I do to help? The
meeting was an opportunity for the group
to learn about Seattle's landmark nomination
process and how that fit in with other
city planning and land-use actions. It
was an evening of spirited discussion
and strategy-making. We were operating
under a tight timeframe as we were
unclear about the status of the property
sale. We discovered there was a lot of
passion and talent among the group which
meant they could offer a diverse set of
skills helpful in preparing a landmark
nomination report and mounting an
effective advocacy campaign. Skills in
the areas of research, writing, photography, communications, architecture,
community organizing, real estate, and
technology all supported the "save the
Roy Vue" preservation effort. Historic
Seattle served as the lead advocate with
the Capitol Hill Historical Society. The
group informed the owners and
developer that it was preparing a
landmark nomination and hoped for their
support, but that was not the case. The
two-pronged strategy to save the Roy
Vue consisted of 1) preparing the
landmark nomination for submittal and 2)
gathering broad support for landmarking through community
engagement with a poster campaign, social media, and personal and professional
connections. The first challenge was to
make sure we submitted the nomination
first in order to be considered the
applicant. Once this was accomplished the
public campaign went full-force. On
November 21st, 2018 the Landmarks
Preservation Board voted unanimously to
designate the Roy Vue under three
designation standards associated with
the property's design, style, and
prominence of site Roy Vue supporters
packed the room and offered eloquent and
heartfelt public comments in favor of
landmarking and why this place matters.
The Roy Vue has been a designated a Seattle landmark since 2018 but the process to
protect it is not yet complete. The owner
and Landmarks staff have been negotiating
controls and incentives and have yet to
reach an agreement. Controls are what
protect a landmark's designated features and incentives are
financial benefits and zoning and
building code relief available to
landmark owners. Once an agreement is
signed, then the City Council can
formally pass a designating ordinance
offering the landmark protection from
demolition and insensitive alterations. So far the Roy Vue has remained
essentially the same and continues to be a treasured home to those who
live there, offering naturally occurring
affordable rents. Last year there was
some talk about potentially adding on to
the building or in the courtyard
but the Landmarks Preservation Board did
not seem too receptive to that idea.
The building management company even
markets the Roy Vue as a historical
landmark. We are hopeful the Roy Vue will
continue to house many future
generations of urban Seattleites. They
will have their predecessors to thank
for that. And now let's talk about our
second landmark, the Sullivan House. It
took only a couple hours, if even that, to
demolish the 122-year-old Sullivan House
on Capitol Hill the morning of March
18th, just days before the governor
issued the statewide stay home order
response to the coronavirus. This
historic home prominently situated on
the southeast corner of 15th Avenue and
East Olive Way was a designated Seattle
landmark in 2018. The house was built in
1898 for Patrick J. and Joanna Sullivan.
PJ Sullivan was the proprietor of Queen
City Boilerworks before becoming
involved in real estate development. The
house was designed in the Queen Anne
style by the prominent architecture firm
of Josenhans and Allan, credited for
designing notable works such as Lewis,
Clark, and Parrington Halls on the
University of Washington campus. The
Sullivan House was converted from a
single-family home to a five-unit
apartment building in 1949. As the years
passed, the house went from elegant and
stately to forlorn and decrepit when
ownership changed in the late 60s
to an owner who did not maintain the
place. Decades of deferred maintenance
made the property an attractive target
for redevelopment, particularly in a hot
real estate market with rampant land
grabs and speculative development. The
property was listed for sale in 2017 for
$2.2 million, a price that did not reflect
the demolition-by-neglect state of the
house. It was a prime candidate for
renovation and some TLC, but the asking
price was cost-prohibitive - leaving the
property vulnerable to market forces. Seeking a way to preserve the historic
house, a Seattle architect and Capitol Hill
neighbor submitted a landmark nomination
application in 2017 without support from
the owner. Owner consent is
actually not required to landmark a
building in Seattle. The Sullivan House was
designated a landmark by the Landmarks
Preservation Board in February 2018. Its
designation was supported by Historic
Seattle and many in the Capitol Hill
community. Historic Seattle supported the
nomination and designation of the
Sullivan House because it embodied the
distinctive characteristics of the Queen
Anne style, represented an outstanding
work of the architecture firm of Josenhans
and Allan, and was situated
prominently on its site - presenting a
striking contrast to surrounding
buildings. After the building was
designated on February 7th, 2018, the
owner and Landmarks staff entered into
negotiations for a controls and
incentives agreement.
Unlike the Roy Vue, which is still in
negotiations, the Sullivan House owner
- actually the estate of the owner, who
passed away - argued against placing
controls, citing that controls would
deprive the estate of reasonable
economic use. Historic Seattle
advocated for controls to be placed on
the Sullivan House through a detailed
analysis and pro-forma demonstrating
that the property, as a designated
landmark with controls, could still
provide a reasonable rate of return to
an owner or investor. We felt it was
important to conduct this analysis because
two other recently designated landmarks
had no controls placed on them, paving
the way for demolition. We did not want
to see another historic property face
the same fate. At a September 19th, 2018
meeting, the Board voted to place
controls on the property. This victory
was short-lived, however, as the owner
appealed the Board's decision to the
City's Hearing Examiner. In early 2019,
the owner and the City of Seattle
settled and controls were lifted - leaving
no protection for the Sullivan House. The
City ultimately agreed with the owner
that controls will prevent the estate
from realizing a reasonable economic
return on the property. Historic Seattle
strongly disagreed with this conclusion
because we demonstrated to the Board
that landmarks controls would not
prevent a reasonable return on the
property. Real estate finance is not an
exact science -
what one developer finds to be an
acceptable rate of return, another may
find unacceptable. The Sullivan House was
the third landmark to be designated
without controls in just over a year. The landmarked Galbraith House, also on Capitol
Hill, was demolished in January 2018
because it had no controls. It has now
been over two years and the site of the
Galbraith House is still vacant as a
replacement project has yet to be built. Controls were not placed on the landmark
Wayne Apartments in Belltown in 2018 and
its days are numbered as well because
the property is for sale and may be
under contract with the developer. Why is
this happening? What's not helping is the
current overinflated market value of
properties in Seattle and the trend of
demolition-by-neglect by owners who let
their properties deteriorate to the
point where rehabilitation is much more
expensive than if the properties have
been maintained over the years. If a
developer or property owner can show no
reasonable economic use for a designated
property, then the death knell will
surely sound for the landmark.
Real estate should not trump community. When architecture is commodified, we lose
sight of why historic places are special and still have value -
and judging a building only by its
facade ignores the significance behind
that facade. The Sullivan House had
provided affordable apartment rentals
for 70 years until it was sold in 2019
to a developer for $2.15 million. A victim
of neglect and development pressure, it
will be replaced by nine townhomes which
will be sold for market rate with a net
gain of four housing units. The
demolition of the Sullivan House will
not be in vain. We learn from this as we
work to protect other designated
landmarks where controls are not yet in
place, because this cannot be the new normal for our
city's historic places. Something needs
to change.
Historic Seattle and our community
partners in preservation hope to work
with the city to look for ways to
improve the landmarks preservation
ordinance so that it can provide the
legal protections needed for our city's
historic places. Landmarks deserve protection, not plaques.
