This video depicts the VIP presentation by the five families who lived in the Gatewood Bed & Breakfast and by Greg Lange, King County archivist, at the June 22, 2014, installment of our “If These Walls Could Talk” tour.
Five families fill charming Gatewood lodge over 104 years
By BRAD CHRISMAN
There are places in West Seattle where the past is present.
Sit at the base of an old-growth cedar in Schmitz Park, and you can experience what the densely forested landscape of our peninsula looked and felt like 160 years ago, before settlers arrived and laid claim to the trees.
Hike the switchback trail at the northwest corner of Lincoln Park, look to the west, and behold the same view that has captured park-goers for decades.
The Gatewood Bed & Breakfast at 7446 Gatewood Road S.W. also is such a place.
Built in 1910, standing proudly on a tree-shaded, half-acre slope, the Craftsman lodge-style home survives with its historical charm fully intact.
And on Sunday, June 22, 2014, it was the site of our historical society’s second-annual “If These Walls Could Talk” home tour.
If the walls of The Gatewood Bed & Breakfast could talk, they would tell the story of five families – Harper, Clark, Frost, Odekirk and Hayes – who have called the place home over the past 104 years.
And during the June 22 home tour, the inn will provide the setting for a reunion of sorts, as members of all five families will be in attendance to share memories and reacquaint themselves with the building’s history.
Owner honors previous families
Margaret Hayes, who bought the house in 1987, made a point of honoring the previous four families when, in 2012, she and her daughter Mary decided to convert it from a residence to an inn. Today, the four upstairs bedrooms are marked with placards bearing the families’ names.
Also fittingly, the building has been carefully restored inside and out to give guests a sense that they’ve been transported to an era when West Seattle was a simpler, quieter, greener place.
Margaret recalls her first impression upon seeing the house 27 years ago.
“I remember the trees,” she says. “I remember looking out the windows and seeing the vegetation, and that was really attractive because you felt like you were in a park. You feel like you’re not in the city, but yet you’re right there in the city.”
Indeed, to this day there is an obvious contrast between rustic Gatewood Road and the more typical, sidewalk-lined streets just a block or two away.
“I remember I’d come home from work on the weekend and I’d hit the bottom of that driveway and it would just feel like, ‘Ahhh,’ because I knew I’d be at home for the weekend,” Margaret says. “There’s a spaciousness that’s relaxing.”
Restoration covers nearly every inch
Maintaining that relaxing environment, it turns out, took a lot of work.
Starting in 1994, Margaret and her husband, Ray, rolled up their sleeves and began a restoration project that would eventually touch practically every inch of the 4,100-square-foot home.
First, they “attacked the electrical,” Margaret recalls. Next, they gutted the basement, digging out a portion to create space for two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a laundry and a kitchen. The family then moved to the basement, where they lived exclusively for two years while they transformed the third-floor rooms.
That upper level – which once counted seven bedrooms, two bathrooms and a laundry room – was eventually converted to four bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, plus the laundry.
The second, main level – which features a sunlit entryway, spacious living room, dining room, library and large kitchen – was completed in the next phase. Whenever possible, the Hayeses kept original features and materials, painstakingly stripping paint that covered the original wood paneling and retaining the original windows.
In other cases, they made alterations but stayed true to the home’s 1910 sensibilities, rebuilding the fireplace with salvaged brick and installing radiators that Ray, a plumber, rescued from an old apartment building.
The result is today’s comfortable inn, which opened to guests in June 2013 and is finding a niche as a guesthouse for area residents who need a place to put up out-of-town friends and relatives.
Increasingly, West Seattle residents live in condos and apartments, Mary explains.
“They need somewhere for their family and friends to stay,” she says. “That’s what we really targeted. If we take care of West Seattle, it will take care of us.”
Today, locals would not question the notion that Gatewood is part of West Seattle. But in 1910, when Francis and Pontine Harper built their new abode, the neighborhood technically had been part of West Seattle for only three years.
That’s because until the summer of 1907 – when the tiny city of West Seattle (in today’s Admiral area) annexed Alki, Youngstown, Spring Hill (the Junction area), Gatewood, Fauntleroy and other neighborhoods, before quickly annexing itself to Seattle – Gatewood was just a trolley stop on the way to Fauntleroy and Endolyne.
Francis and Pontine, who were born in England, had immigrated to Seattle by way of Canada, where their six children were born. Francis, who had served as a captain in the British military and as a Canadian Mountie, found employment in Seattle as an agent for the Pacific Coast Steamship Co.
A photo shows the Harpers enjoying a tennis court that they built in the front yard. Today, the court is gone, but other features of the house and property look much the same as they did in the photo.
After Francis died in 1924, the Harpers continued to live in the house until around 1931, when they started renting it out.
In 1940, a new chapter began as Ed and Lottie Clark bought the place and moved in with their daughters Jean, Margaret and Dorothy.
An accomplished cellist, Ed had worked as traveling musician during the Depresssion, according to his granddaughter Anne Moody (Jean’s daughter).
“He was in an orchestra and he went from town to town,” she says. “They said they kind of avoided feeling poor during that time because they were on the road. I mean, he was not well-paid at all, but because they were moving from one town to another, they didn’t have to think about it.”
The lodge, by then 30 years old and in need of repair, was considered a “white elephant” when the Clarks bought it, Anne says. “No one wanted that house. That wasn’t a desirable place to live at all. But they absolutely loved it.”
Music found a home during the Clark years. Ed gave piano and accordion lessons in the basement, and family get-togethers often featured dancing on the main floor, which they called the ballroom or “the big room.”
Moody fondly remembers those spirited gatherings of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
“I mean, that house was a play land,” she recalls. “The ballroom was basically empty except it had two huge bear rugs on the floor. It had couches on the outside and then a whole lot of empty hardwood floor. My uncle was into music and he had huge speakers placed around the room, so it was a place for dancing. It was fabulous.”
One of the upstairs bedrooms was Lottie’s costume-making room. “She would make fabulous costumes for us, among other fabulous things,” Moody says. “We would all dance, and it was just terrific fun.”
Over the years, the building was home to three more families: the Frosts from 1965 to 1969, the Odekirks from 1970 to 1987 and the present Hayes clan. But the story almost ended before the Hayeses took ownership.
“I think it had been on the market a couple years,” Margaret says. “I think we were the second or maybe third offer. “One of the other offers, if not both, were from developers. They wanted to knock the house down because there are three city lots here.”
Luckily for those who appreciate historic preservation, the Hayes offer prevailed, and today the building gets rave reviews in its new role as a home away from home for out-of-town visitors.
Sarah Barton, Margaret’s niece who serves as the resident innkeeper, says the family’s focus on taking care of West Seattle is working.
Often, families “don’t have room for Grandma and Grandpa,” she says. “And Grandma and Grandpa are totally fine staying here.”
Sometimes, a whole extended family will come over to the house – children playing in the yard, adults gravitating to the comfort of the living room.
“It’s fun,” Barton says. “It’s still a home.”
[Brad Chrisman, a former board member of our historical society, was the editorial coordinator for the 1987 “West Side Story” history book. He is co-chair of the home tour.]
