JUNCTION LANDMARKS? Campbell Building nomination to be considered February 15th, same meeting as Hamm Building vote

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(Campbell Building. Above, WSB photo, March 2016; below, undated photo from landmark-nomination document)

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The February 15th meeting of the city Landmark Preservation Board has now become, in part, a West Seattle doubleheader, now that the 1918-built Campbell Building has been added to the agenda. From Clay Eals, executive director of the Southwest Seattle Historical Society:

The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board hearing and vote on our nomination of the Campbell Building for landmark status has been scheduled for the board’s meeting at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017, at Seattle City Hall.

This is the same meeting that the board has scheduled its hearing and vote on designation of the Hamm Building for landmark status. (The board voted unanimously in favor of our landmark nomination for Hamm at its meeting Jan. 4, 2017.)

At the Feb. 15 meeting, the Hamm designation hearing and vote likely will take place prior to the Campbell nomination hearing and vote.

In anticipation of the Feb. 15 meeting, we encourage supporters of landmarking the Hamm and Campbell buildings to take one or both of the following steps:

(1) Write messages or letters in support of Hamm designation and Campbell nomination to the board via e-mail to Erin Doherty, historic preservation coordinator for the board, or via a letter mailed to the board at PO Box 94649, Seattle, WA 98124-4649.

(2) Plan to attend the Hamm and Campbell hearings, which likely will begin in the late afternoon and could extend to early evening. About a week prior to the meeting, when the complete agenda is released, we will announce more specific times for each hearing as well as a plan to help guide people to the meeting from the West Seattle Junction transit center.

SWSHS officially submitted the landmark nominations last September. You can see the nomination documents for both buildings – which contain detailed background and historical photos, among other things – on the city website. The Campbell Building nomination is here; the Hamm Building nomination is here. (And here’s our coverage of the meeting at which the board advanced its nomination to be considered for landmark status.)

To see which West Seattle sites are already landmarks (and others around the city), check out this map.

18 Replies to "JUNCTION LANDMARKS? Campbell Building nomination to be considered February 15th, same meeting as Hamm Building vote"

  • Swede. January 26, 2017 (12:01 pm)

    An interesting thing that should be noticed on these old photos I think is the tracks. There obviously used to be trolley service out here. I work for Metro and some of our (not so) old maps still have them on it, wasn’t that long ago they where removed. 

    Should have kept them with the current traffic we got around Seattle…

    • Brad Chrisman January 26, 2017 (12:48 pm)

       And those tracks tell the story of how The Junction got its name.  In 1907, the city of West Seattle (then limited to the area known today as the Admiral District) extended its street railway a mile south  to connect with the new Fauntleroy streetcar line — forming an important junction at the intersection of California and Alaska. The rest is history.

      • Swede. January 26, 2017 (7:04 pm)

        That’s for that info! 

        History, especially local is interesting and fun. 

      • Swede. January 26, 2017 (7:06 pm)

        That should, obviously say ‘Thanks’. Smartphones seldom live up to there name all the time do they…

    • DumplingGirl January 26, 2017 (2:28 pm)

      My understanding is Endolyne Joes’ name is based on the tracks, and up in the Admiral District the weird triangle block on 44th and Hill was the trolley turnaround.

      • Chris Cowman January 26, 2017 (5:48 pm)

        Grew up in Fauntleroy…Name from

        END OF THE LINE.. Of the old trolly system. 

  • miws January 26, 2017 (12:47 pm)

    Swede, I’m sure I’ve read somewhere when the tracks were actually removed, but the (rail) trolley service was pretty much gone from Seattle by 1940 so it may have ended here in WS around 1939-40.

    After that, there was trackless trolley service for several years, but I think that ended here in WS around 1963. If the cobwebs in my brain could be knocked away, there’s probably some very deeply buried memory of my riding them, or at least seeing them in the Junction, and north on California up to Admiral. I turned 5 in late September of ’63, so don’t have a vivid or even slightly vague memory of them here. 

    Mike

    • JanS January 26, 2017 (6:38 pm)

      damn, Mike (MIWS), you’re just a baby…I have 11 years on you. :) I got here in January, 1975…it was definitely all gone by then…

      • miws January 27, 2017 (9:18 am)

        Jan, Yeah, definitely gone by then. I can remember (sorta) clearly back to 1975. ;-) 

        I ended up back in West Seattle about a year before you arrived after about 4 1/2 years on the Kitsap Peninsula, and having turned 15 a few months earlier and basically being forced to learn the bus system (Metro Transit in its infancy, being formed about a year before *that*,  to replace Seattle Transit, and King County’s Metropolitan Transit Co.) I realized I had a great fascination of buses beyond which that many younger children might outgrow by the time they hit their teens, and certainly by the time they reach adulthood. 

        Mike

    • Swede. January 26, 2017 (7:10 pm)

      Thank you Mike for that info! 

      I love learning more about the area like this. So I’m guessing our old maps still have it on there is because of the overhead which the trolley busses still needed.  

  • Donna DeRousie January 26, 2017 (1:59 pm)

    Yes! We love our old building. 

  • Andy January 27, 2017 (6:29 am)

    Hopefully, both buildings will be approved. I love the connection to an earlier time these buildings provide.

  • BJG January 27, 2017 (8:55 am)

    The corner of the Campbell building had a (Bartell I think) drugstore soda fountain where one could have a sandwich and a Green River. Above that was Banta, a hair salon where many of us got “permanent waves” for our first days at Jefferson School. Yes, we still have the fuzzy haired pictures to regret. According to me, that was not so long ago.

  • sue in Gatewood January 27, 2017 (9:44 am)

    Y’all need to get a copy of the book  West Side Story – I don’t know if it’s still in print – but it’s a great primer on the history of our area….Looks like you may be able to purchase from the gift shop at Southwest Historical Society’s website: http://www.loghousemuseum.info/gift-shop/

  • Clay Eals January 27, 2017 (11:01 am)

    Sue, thanks for the mention of West Side Story. Yes, we still have copies for sale for $15 at our “Birthplace of Seattle” Log House Museum, open noon to 4 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. The book, approaching its 30th anniversary, was published July 1, 1987. The mind boggles at the updates that would be needed since then!

    Clay Eals
    executive director, Southwest Seattle Historical Society
    editor/project manager,  West Side Story, published by the West Seattle Herald and White Center News

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