Yet Another Wonderful Queen Anne Landmark: The Sanctuary on 11th Ave. W.
Next Wednesday April 2 at 3:30, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board will consider the nomination of the Wilde Streatfield House on 11th Ave. W. The Queen Anne Historical Society endorses this nomination and looks forward to welcoming our neighborhood’s 55th designated landmark.
Homeowner David Streatfield, a professor emeritus of landscape architecture at the University of Washington, is submitting the nomination as a dedication to the home and garden that he and his partner, Madeleine Wilde, created together. The nomination was written with significant help from BOLA Architecture + Planning and David Peterson, historic resource consulting.
Wilde was the author of Notes from the Garden, which ran in the Queen Anne & Magnolia News for 20 years, beginning in the 1990’s. A posthumous collection of her articles was published as book with the same name in 2021. Wilde lovingly referred to their home and garden as “the Sanctuary.”
The house and a bit of the garden
Although other Craftsman style houses have been designated Seattle landmarks, we are fortunate that this one is enhanced by an important garden. Over time, the owners have contributed significantly not only to Seattle history but also to its evolution as an open and tolerant place to live. The Wilde-Streatfield collaboration on the gardens, along with their broad sharing of landscape knowledge academically and in local journalism, is simply wonderful.
The nomination makes clear the importance of Earl Layman, Seattle’s first Historic Preservation Officer, to the architectural preservation of properties in Seattle, including the Queen Anne neighborhood. It only alludes, however, to how Layman encouraged members of the city's LGBTQA+ community to engage and stand out in the work of preserving the historic fabric of our city. Without it, we would have lost all too many historic buildings and not have had the knowledge that made saving them possible.
The garden looking east.
The nomination also contributes to Queen Anne and Seattle's architectural history with new information about the previously undocumented life and work of the home’s designer Frederick Mortimer Barnes and his firm F. M. Barnes & Company.