Anita requested pics of our home in response to an earlier post, something I’ve declined to do out of a concern for geographic privacy – we have had plenty of burglars already, thanks very much. While I’m sure our recently-updated security system will help, break-ins in our neighborhood remain an issue, so please forgive me for being chary.

In the past I have deliberately avoided discussing our apartment because of this issue. However, it is a topic worth tackling, both anecdotally and architecturally. I’m not up to a full-on dissertation on the topic of Fred Anhalt today, alas. But I can lay out the facts briefly.

Frederick Anhalt came from Montana to Seattle early in the 20th century as a junior butcher. While pursuing his trade, he fell into contracting and helped facilitate the design and development of several ‘suburban’ markets and groceries. The Canal Market at 219 Fuhrman E., on the skirts of the Ship Canal on the downslope from Capitol Hill, is said to be an example of these projects.

Successful in these endeavors, he began to get more requests, the most prominent resulting project being the remodeled Eastlake Romio’s (alas, no image Googled up to the surface), which Anhlat descibed in his biography as a building originally erected in the 1880’s. If verifiable, that would mean the building is one of the oldest remaining in Seattle, largely settled in the 1860s. Seattle residents will recognize it as the turreted building on the Capitol Hill side of the University Bridge drawbridge, in the shadow of I-5.

After the remodel, in which the building came to resemble a Norman castle in miniature, Anhalt put two and two together and began to pursue work as a builder. As I recall he worked with the other exponent of craft apartments in Seattle of the day, the Loveless firm. This is the builder responsible for most of the Spanish-Moorish nineteen-twenties apartments in Capitol Hill and the University District. The finest work of the firm is not in that genre, though. It bears the Loveless name and houses both shops and housing across the street from the Harvard Exit Theater, at the north end of Broadway. The building also houses Bacchus, a delicious greek restaurant the features amazing murals executed at the time of the building’s first tenancy, illustrating a Russian folk tale. The paintings were executed for the initial tenant, the Russian Tea Room, one of the interesting legacies of the post-revolutionary era for the neighborhood: Capitol Hill was a hotbed of White Russians, and their influence on the architecture of the neighborhood is considerable.

Tomorrow: What Fred did.

LINKS

HistoryLink: Frederick Anhalt

The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest feature, 2002.

Better Homes and Gardens: October, 2003 feature.

MISCMedia: Clark weighs in, October 2000.

During Anhalt’s life, two books were published relating to this aspect of his life and work. I’ll see what I can dig up on those webside.

5 thoughts on “Anhalt roundup

  1. ba-DUMP-BAM!

    LaydeeeZ! itZ Wil FOR-BIS!!

    Head on over there and pay your respects (or flee in locker-room terror, either one works).

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