This may be, in the long term, the most important work we do. It
is an ongoing effort to identify, record and
help preserve structures and places that have historic significance.
To re-define the old axiom, the walls can speak, and the
stories that these treasures have to tell will last for generations.
Identified locations are from all parts of the county and involve a
cross-section of cultures, ranging from mercantile stores to school houses
to industrial workshops.
Currently, the number of sites is far, far too
extensive to publish here (although we will include a complete list,
eventually) but we have selected a very few to share with you here.
The Chair of the KCHS Historic Sites Committee is
Anetta Butler.
Boasts
a Storied Past and
Now it's a Manette Home.
Eric August Vall, known as August Wall, was born in Hudiksvll, Sweden,
April 29, 1862. He arrived to work at the newly established Puget Sound
Navy Yard in 1900. Vall’s job was to establish a copper shop at the navy
yard. He was the first coppersmith employed and rose to be the first
quarterman coppersmith, the highest rank a coppersmith could hold at that
time.
Vall’s 16 year-old son, Walter,
arrived July 1, 1901. He was big, strong, intelligent, and knew enough
coppersmithing to be more qualified than many of the men who applied.
Together they built the then customary tent-stand in a field north of the
navy yard in what is now the Burwell Street area. To this tent he brought
his wife Marta — born Marta Edllund May 16, 1864 — and their three other
children, Walda, 13, Erik August Jr., 11, and Eda Christine, 5. They
bought 10 acres in the Decatur township, later called Manette, in the
Shore Drive and Perry Avenue area, and August was active in community
affairs.
He built a one-room shop, 20 by
30 feet and two stories high, at what is now 223 Shore Drive. Here he set
up a forge and a workbench and kept a complete set of coppersmithing tools
and equipment. In 1910, August moved the family to Tacoma, where he
started his own coppersmith business and subsequently worked for a
shipbuilder in Seattle. He returned to the Navy Yard in 1926 and retired
in 1930. He died in 1946 and Marta died in 1947.
In 1906, Eric August Wall
donated acetylene lighting to the Bethany Baptist Church, a.k.a. Manette
Community Church. He also built the weathervane for the two-story,
four-room Manette School, built in 1912. When the building was torn down
in 1959, the weathervane was given to Margaret Elliott, who had taught
fourth grade at Manette for 29 years. She later presented it to the Kitsap
County Historical Society.
(Click the thumbnail image, above, to view
the structure as it appears today. Photo source unknown.)
The Bremerton Trust & Savings Bank Building:
A Symbol of Confidence, Strength, and Security.
In April 1914, the Bremer
family announced that they would be constructing a new building for
Bremerton Trust & Savings on the northeast corner of Second and Pacific.
Dean of Architecture at University of Washington, Harlan Thomas, whose
work Mrs. William (Sophia) Bremer admired, was the architect for the
project.
Chartered in 1914, it was one
of only four Bremerton banks to survive the depression. George E. Miller,
former Port Orchard business owner and organizer of Kitsap County Bank in
1908, held the major interest. T.O. Buffington, owner of a general store
on Washington Avenue and Third, was treasurer. Local businessman, James H.
Braman, founder of Braman Millwork & Manufacturing Co, was one of the
first five members.
The bank was sold to Peoples
National Bank of Washington in 1949.Following World War I, the Navy paid
the Bremer family for properties below Front Street (south of First
Street) for expansion of the shipyard. With this money, the Bremer family
constructed four more Harlan Thomas-designed buildings. Two that are still
standing are the Harlan Building, 402 Pacific, and its mirror image, the
Olympic Building on the northwest corner Fourth and Pacific.
202 Pacific Avenue is currently home
to the architectural firm of Art Anderson & Associates.
The George Fellows Hall
Has Housed Various
Businesses Spanning
Ten Decades.
Originally the
George Fellows Hall was built in 1904, with
two ground-floor store rooms and a public hall upstairs at what is now
2202 Eleventh street in Manette. The builders of this sturdy wooden
structure, if visiting it today, would marvel at the incredible number if
reincarnations it would have experienced in the century since.
It was
reported to have one of the best dance floors on the bay. The solid-oak
ground floor and fir second floor are still there. More than two years
later, in 1906, Panchet & Rodger General Store
opened in that
location.
George Card
and his brother took over the store in September 1907, and A.B.
Williams & Son Hardware & General Merchandise,
purchased Card’s interest in 1908. George Fellows died May 25, 1910, and
Thomas Fellows inherited the property, which he sold Jan. 30, 1912, to
H.P. Martin.
In 1913,
Martin traded the property to J.W. Meredith for a store owned by Meredith
in Seattle. J.W. Meredith operated Manette- Rochdale Hardware until his son, Clyde,
joined him and the business was renamed
Meredith & Son Groceries, Hardware & Feed,
1918 – 1951.
Later, the
building was rented by Vern Freeman’s Union Electric &
Hardware, in the
1950 and 1960s. It has been home to The Gamesters and various other
businesses, since the 1960s. From the opening night’s moving-picture
entertainment and dance on Saturday, May 14, 1904, George Fellows Hall was
the site of a varied schedule of community activities. Some of these
events were box socials, improvement- club meetings, dances, political
rallies, W.C.T.U. (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) meetings, Grange
meetings, G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic), suffragettes, magic-lantern
shows, church services, weddings, lodges, minstrel shows, Girl Scout
meetings, and many other events.
We will be adding more profiles
of historic sites as time permits. For more profiles, see the newsletter
archives in the "Society News" section.
