by Kirby Lindsay, posted 29 July 2013
On Saturday, August 3rd, at 3p at History House of Greater Seattle, Fremocentrist.com – this neighborhood’s news website – goes live with a third installment in its Fireside Chat series. This presentation on the history, culture and people of Fremont will carry a torch out onto actual, physical sites where the evolution of our waterfront, public art and central, core retail area will be revealed.
The first 15 of this hour long Fireside Chat & Stroll will concern the ever-evolving nature of our bit of Lake Union shoreline. Its history has left few landmarks, as the area has long been one of action rather than retention.
As The Mill Grew
Our waterfront is about function – commerce and navigation – over appearance. We sit on the northwest corner of the lake, a ‘U’ shaped body of water that unites Lake Washington and the Ship Canal to Puget Sound. While Lake Washington provides swimming beaches and vistas for expensive homes, Lake Union has shipyards, house boats, marinas, and educational centers.
The Fremont portion started as a place for logging. In 1856 John Ross, described as a millwright, settled in this area with his wife, Mary Jane. Described as the first white settlers, they began the work of clearing the land by felling the timber here, and rolling the logs into the water to be floated, or stored, until processing into lumber.
The Fremont shoreline topography looked very different then. The Ship Canal beneath the Fremont Bridge was only a creek referred to as the outlet or the slough. Writings from pre-1900 contain vague references to the location of the outlet possibly because the stream of the water shifted as development, and logs, redirected it.
Additionally, the road, North Northlake Way, that currently follows the shore of Lake Union in Fremont – from Stone Way to the Quadrant Lake Union Center/Adobe campus – did not exist.
The mainline for the Lakeshore & Eastern railroad, started in 1883, did along this stretch, and connected Seattle to Sumas. In that pre-auto time, a railroad could be more significant than a road.
In the late 1800s, a mill was located on the water’s edge in Fremont and processed our timber here – and from over the region. The waters became clogged with floating logs from around the area, particularly after construction (started by hand by Harvey Pike in 1860) of the Montlake Cut, finished in 1883.
Mills habitually shut down due to fire and/or bankruptcy, and the one in Fremont had several owners, different names, and a variety of building configurations over its history. In October 1939, J.R. Burke purchased the former Bryant Mill and proceeded to repair, reconfigure and reconnect the property with its neighborhood.
Change Happens
Often seen as a Fremont founder, Burke actually came to the neighborhood and built on what he found here already – and contributed to the evolution of the shoreline.
When he purchased it, the mill had its access by a poorly maintained and potentially dangerous off-ramp from the Bridge. Trucks of materials and products needed to come and go, so Burke convinced the City to build a road along the railroad. Dirt spread alongside the trestles got tamped down under the truck wheels and slowly formed Northlake Way. The finished road also gave King County a place to put sewer lines through this area for the houseboats, marinas and businesses along the shore.
A similar change took place under the George Washington Memorial Bridge, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the City of Seattle allowed the wooden wharf of logs floating in the water to be transformed into an earthen wharf. The area quickly found use as loading and parking for the railroad spur, particularly when Burke transformed his mill into an Industrial Park in the early 1960s.
In the 1990s, Burke leased his land to Quadrant Corporation for construction of an office park. Quadrant turned the parking area into a green space (locally referred to as ‘Groves Park’) with an aesthetic hill, lawn, picnic table, bench and bike path, all providing the public with some of the very first recreational shoreline use in Fremont.
All along the Fremont shoreline similar stories tell of businesses bought and sold and rebuilt. Lee’s Moorings, a floating homes condominium community, at 933 N Northlake Way, was a business originally owned, in the 1930s, by a Scandinavian man named Mr. Lee. The Lake Union Waterworks Building, at 1101 N Northlake Way, originally was Vosaja’s Boat Yard, owned by Arnie Vosaja, again possibly established in the 1930s. Built on a wooden superstructure, the Waterworks Building was constructed by architects in the 1960s. Ocean Alexander has less straight-line history having previously been Dunato & Sons, Schertzer Brothers, and a Seattle Public Schools boat building educational site.
Only one business along this stretch may lay claim to being a direct descendent – Vic Franck’s Boat Company – although it has also passed through different hands. Seattle’s oldest boat builder/repairer, established in 1927, the company started as Franck & McCrary. Manufacturer of small yachts, Franck’s has been long associated with high-quality boat building and repair/upgrades.
The Legacy Of ‘Doc’
The most historic and established of Fremont’s waterfront businesses was begun by someone else. A Seattle City Councilmember, Captain ‘Cap’ Webster, began Fremont Towing here in 1915 to move logs, coal barges and boats through the Fremont portion of the Ship Canal (built by Chinese laborers in 1911,) and the Hiram Chittenden Locks, opened in 1917. Webster also established the Fremont Boat Market in 1916, for selling moorage, boats and marine hardware.
In 1928, employee Orin Henry ‘Doc’ Freeman purchased the Market. He bought the property, previously log storage, at 999 N Northlake Way in 1938. In addition to his business, Doc Freeman’s, he moved his family – wife May and son Mark – onto the site and into the decommissioned ferry ‘Airline.’
Doc Freeman’s became the place for marine hardware, engines, and advice, even after 1952 when Freeman announced to employees Bob Braas and Pete Knudson that ‘you guys are going to be partners,’ and sold them the business. The company continued to operate at its original site for several decades, until satellite stores were founded to avoid the shoreline code constrictions on expansions. It finally closed in 2003.
The Freeman family, however, kept the property and today Mark Freeman and his wife Margie still operate Fremont Boat Company, Fremont Tug and a marina there. (The marina can be seen in the 1974 film ‘McQ’ as the place where John Wayne’s character has a house boat.)
Accessing The Shoreline
The Fremont shoreline has two access points – Waterway #22 and Waterway #23. Platted at statehood, these 180’ wide areas are left for ‘use of commerce and navigation from water to the land and land to the water.’
At the foot of Stone Way, Waterway #22 may appear to be much the same as it did to South Coast Salish tribe when they used to camp here before white settlers arrived. It does looks wild and untouched – although a low bridge briefly extended from here to Queen Anne, from 1911 to 1917.
Today Waterway #23 has a small, floating pier, for use by the public and the Lake Washington Rowing Club (LWRC.) Established in 1958, the LWRC built its permanent home, at 910 N Northlake, and this pier across the road, in 1995. They built the pier to be removable should it be required for access.
In 2000, Waterway #23 did provide ‘use of commerce…from water to the land’ when a building squeezed through. Just east of the LWRC building stands another structure – a warehouse originally located in the former Burke Mill, built in 1928. The owner of The Production Network (TPN) bought the building for $1, cut it into three pieces and moved two of them to this site, reusing all the wood from the third to build the conference room and stairs inside.
As can be read, the history of Fremont’s waterfront has layers, but with few markers of its past. To find out more about how this area developed, with 3D visual aids, take an afternoon stroll on Saturday, August 3rd. This free, informative program (or any of the upcoming Fremont Fireside Chats) can help bring history, and all Fremont’s anecdotes, to life.
Hope to see you there!
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Publisher’s Note: The author of this column is a blood relative of J.R. Burke.
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©2013 Kirby Lindsay. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Reproduction, adaptation or distribution without permission is prohibited.