Snowy Owl's Alley Houses

In 2015, Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien introduced legislation to make it easier to construct Detached Accessory Dwelling Units (DADUs) in every Seattle neighborhood. A DADU is also known as a backyard cottage. The Queen Anne Community Council, a community advocacy group, through its Land Use Review Committee (LURC) challenged the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) regarding the law because it treated every neighborhood in the same way without considering individual neighborhood differences. The LURC implied that the vague EIS did not acknowledge the threat to the historic fabric of Queen Anne’s single-family residential areas.

As former LURC Chair Martin Henry Kaplan wrote on March 16, 2019 in an email to the community, "...the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is deficient and inadequate in studying and transparently revealing the true impacts to every Seattle property owner. As CM O’Brien and his colleagues propose to eliminate all single-family zoning citywide, we deserve a City Hall committed to robust neighborhood outreach, transparent and complete study and considered public input."

As a historic preservation planner who believes that increased urban density is one way to fight global warming, and just like the city's Hearing Examiner who on March 19, 2019 rejected the LURC arguments, I did not agree with their position. In fact, adding backyard cottages or ‘alley houses’ to our purportedly single-family lots is indeed a feature of Queen Anne’s historic fabric. At least that's true for the area west of 1st Ave. N., which is characterized by alleys and chockablock with alley houses. (There are no alleys east of 1st Ave. N.)

To prove that alley houses are woven into the historic neighborhood fabric, I would need to do a survey of every alley, but the task is daunting. I’ve been seeking a simpler solution, perhaps a small sample would do the trick. Now, thanks to my new best friend, Snowy Owl, I found the place to do it.

Snowy Owl, you may remember, has been camping on rooftops since November 14 (2020) off the alley between 1st and 2nd Avenues W. running from the McClure parking lot north to McGraw St., and I’ve been visiting the bird and the alley every day. To my delight, I discovered alley houses, new and old, scattered along the way. I restricted my sample to the shorter alley from the parking lot at McClure Middle School to W. Boston St.

Comparing the buildings along the alley to those shown on the 1917 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map would prove that alley houses and their modern DADU cousins have long been part of the historic fabric of the neighborhood.

As you can tell from this screenshot of page 413 of the 1917 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, this typical block had two alley houses in 1917 (Boston St. is at the top of the screenshot; Crockett St, is below). Comparing the city’s side sewer map to the Sanborn map sheds a little light on the story, for both of the houses shown with alley houses were built and connected to the sewer in 1910. Unfortunately, there is no date given for the connection of the alley houses to the sewer. We know then that they appeared sometime between 1910 and 1917.

I marked the alley houses on the Sanborn map in yellow. The one at 2129 ½ 1st Ave. W. sits on a relatively new foundation, while the other, at 2122 ½ 2nd Ave. W., is just getting one. The blue X on the west side of the alley indicates the site of a new alley house over a garage, pictured just below. The red X on the east side is where a garage has been designed to suggest it too is an alley house. In1964, the school district destroyed the three houses along Crockett St. to make room for the new McClure Middle School parking lot. The residential quality of the block is made clear as all the buildings are labeled with a ‘D’. It stands for "wood frame dwelling." A close look tells you that all the houses except the alley houses and the one at 115 W. Boston St. had basements (B). The D would have been significant. That way the fire insurance company, let’s say Sanborn back in Philadelphia, would have known they were being snookered when someone submitted a claim for an expensive brick building  that had burned down on the site. The prevention of true fraud at any moment in history is probably a good thing.

This speedy analysis shows us that the City Council’s DADU law allowing the introduction of second homes on lots in our neighborhood of single-family homes actually enhances its historic quality, and as this quick look down at Snowy Owl Alley reveals, early on Queen Anne homeowners loved adding little cottages in their backyards.

Reference:  The Seattle Times 1/24/2021:  "A majestic snowy owl perches high enough on Queen Anne Hill to look down on its admirers"