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Author: Valarie

Valarie was born in Seattle and is a volunteer neighborhood history writer.

The McKenzie Building at 3400 Fremont Avenue North

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By 1927 Fremont was a well-established neighborhood with a busy commercial district along Fremont Avenue North and the side-streets including North 34th Street. In that year a pioneer building, Hotel Dixon, was demolished to make way for a new-era commercial building with storefronts at the sidewalk level and offices upstairs. There also is a basement which today still houses successful businesses.

The McKenzie Building at 3400 Fremont Avenue North was designed by Seattle architect John R. Nevins, a resident of the early Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle.

Today the building at 3400 Fremont Avenue North is still known as the McKenzie, with the name spelled out in decorative tile and brickwork. David McKenzie (1858-1929) was a business investor who came to Seattle in 1907 and had a varied career. Along with business interests he served as one of the three King County Councilmen, and he was director of the Westlake Public Market until 1925. In 1926 he was one of the investors in Fremont’s Queen City Bank which had been organized by Fremont businessmen including Bryant Lumber Company executives.

In the last years of his life David McKenzie’s occupation was listed as real estate investor. He may have intended to live in retirement supported by rental income from the new McKenzie Building.

A long-time tenant of the McKenzie Building was the Costas Opa Greek restaurant, which operated from 1981 to 2012. A Chase Bank branch later opened in the McKenzie Building. At this writing in February 2025 the ground floor of the McKenzie Building is vacant.

Hotel Dixon at 3400 Fremont Avenue North

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Walter A. Shorey was one of the enterprising young men who came to Seattle to get in on its opportunities for growth. He arrived just in time for the opening of a new neighborhood, Fremont, in 1888. Shorey obtained a prime site at the main intersection of North 34th Street & Fremont Avenue, to build a large hotel/boarding house. Fremont’s founders had planned ahead to establish resources for the community, so they had already set up a lumber mill which provided jobs and materials to build houses. A boarding house was needed for temporary residents or single men like the sawmill workers.

After about ten years Walter Shorey sold the hotel to Samuel Dixon, another early Fremont businessman. Shorey continued to live in the area and listed himself as a real estate agent. Perhaps Shorey sold the boarding house business because he’d had to slow down due to poor health, as he died in 1903.

In the 1901 photo shown here, people on the veranda of Hotel Dixon are standing with their bicycles. The reason for this might be because hotel proprietor Samuel Dixon also owned a bicycle shop, right across the street. During his years as a businessman in Fremont, Dixon juggled several enterprises, including insurance, banking and real estate developments.

Hotel Dixon stood on this site, northeast corner of 34th & Fremont Avenue North, until 1927 when it was replaced by the McKenzie Building.

3400 Phinney Avenue North: the original trolley car barn

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The red-brick trolley car barn in Fremont was built in 1905 as a home base for the five lines which traveled around the Fremont, Ballard, Phinney, and Greenlake areas. The parking area had pits below, used by mechanics who repaired the underworking of the cars. On the east side of the building was a yard with a wash tower for cleaning the cars.

The building was the first major streetcar service facility to be built in north Seattle, and it represented the heyday of trolley service under Stone & Webster ownership. The trolley era came to a sudden end in 1941 when the City of Seattle abandoned the system and converted to gas-powered buses. The last streetcar to operate in the City of Seattle stopped at the Fremont Car Barn on April 13, 1941.

During World War Two in the 1940s, the car barn was taken over by the Army and was used as storage space. After the war, the building was used by the Seattle Disposal Company to house garbage trucks.

In 1988 the car barn became the home of Redhook Ale Brewery, with the Trolleyman pub on the northwest corner of the building. From 2006-2025 the car barn was the production facility and retail store outlet of Theo Chocolate.

The Fremont Trolley Car Barn received historic designation in 1989 under the City of Seattle Historic Preservation Program. At this writing in February 2025 we await the next use of this landmark building in Fremont.

3400 Phinney Avenue North: car barn

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After nineteen years in Fremont, the Theo Chocolate Company has announced closure of their store in February 2025, as well as the store in Bellevue.

The Theo Chocolate building at 3400 Phinney Avenue North which had also been used as their factory, was built in 1905 as a car barn for the trolley system. The centrality of Fremont and the convergence of tracks there, helped earn the designation of Fremont as Center of the Universe. The building was officially landmarked for historic preservation in 1989.

Read more at this Wikipedia article about the car barn.

The McMullen Fuel Company

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In 1889 J. S. McMullen, age 55, pulled up stakes and went out West.  He had spent most of his life in Michigan but perhaps he was enticed to start a new life by word of the rich natural resources of the Seattle area.  McMullen brought his wife and four adult children, and the family became business leaders in the Fremont neighborhood.

Continue reading “The McMullen Fuel Company”

The Odd Fellows Building at 3501 Fremont Ave North

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The International Order of Odd Fellows Building is located at the main intersection of downtown Fremont, at Fremont Ave and Fremont Place/corner of North 35th Street. The building was designed by John T. Mattson. The cornerstone at 3509 Fremont indicates that it was dedicated on June 1, 1927, for the Fremont International Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization. It housed the Fremont Lodge No. 76, International Order of Odd Fellows. Prior to the construction of this brick building, the I.O.O.F. had a wood-frame building on this site that was built in 1891.

The Odd Fellows was a group which featured burial insurance, and they formerly owned the cemetery at the top of Queen Anne Hill, now called Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.

Like the Doric Lodge building which is adjacent just to the north, the Odd Fellows group planned that rental income from the retail storefronts of their building would help support their organization, which met on the second floor. The interior includes an auditorium with a small stage that was used for meetings of the I.O.O.F., reached by the staircase at the 3509 Fremont entrance.

Auditorium Cleaners was a long-time street-level tenant, from 1930s to 1990s. At the time of the 1937 photo, Auditorium Cleaners was called “Auditorium Dye Works”.

Michael Peck bought the building from the I.O.O.F. in 1978. He was a tenant in the property at that time. He said the condition of the building was similar to how it is today, although he did some cleanup inside and out. However, after the 2001 Nisqually Earthquake, the parapet structure facing Fremont Place collapsed. This necessitated the rebuilding of walls, re-bricking, new windows and a steel marquee. Peck had these features restored in the same style as the original.

Charles Ottoson’s Artistic Iron Work Shop, 3909 Aurora Avenue North in Fremont

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Charles Nils Ottoson was born in Sweden in 1894. He trained as a blacksmith, which meant doing many kinds of metalwork. In 1919 Ottoson came to the USA and went out to Hollywood, California, where he had been told that there were wealthy people who would pay for custom ironwork such as gates, window grills, and railings. Smaller items he could make included fireplace screens, weathervanes and candelabra. Ottoson developed a clientele of doing custom Spanish-style black iron detailing on the mansions of movie stars. Then the economic crash called the Great Depression hit in 1929, and work dried up.

Ottoson came to Seattle and was able to find work again where he had his own shop at 3909 Aurora Avenue North. Described as an “artistic ironworker,” Ottoson produced custom works in wrought iron but also brass, bronze, copper and aluminum. In addition to taking custom orders, Ottoson would also make small items such as candlesticks which he might sell on a retail basis.

Today Ottoson’s shop building still stands at 3909 Aurora Avenue North, occupied by Vallantine Motor Works, a motorcycle service and repair shop.

Sources:

Genealogical search on Washington Digital Archives and on Ancestry.com

Newspaper articles: “Blacksmith Real Man of Distinction,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, 5 January 1960, page 5. “Last of the Red-Hot Iron Artists,” Seattle Daily Times 27 April 1969, page 221, Times photos by Roy Scully.

Photos: Seattle Engineering Department photo of 1955 accessed on Seattle Municipal Archives; contemporary photo from the website of the company, Vallantine Motor Works, which currently occupies the building.

Doric Lodge #92, F&AM, Fremont

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In 1891 Fremont, founded as a separate entity, was annexed to the City of Seattle and became a neighborhood. In September 1892 thirteen members of the Masons group met at Fremont Hall to petition for a new lodge, to be known as Doric Lodge. The Grand Lodge of Washington concurred, and a charter was granted in June 1893.

The new lodge met in Fremont Hall (3400 block of Fremont Ave) at first, but as they grew in numbers they sought out a permanent space. They purchased land in the 3500 block of Fremont Avenue and designed the Doric Temple, completing construction in 1909. Their meeting room was on the second floor with ground-floor spaces for commercial tenants, whose lease payments helped support the Lodge. The first businesses in the spaces were a hardware store and a funeral home. Jacob Bleitz of the funeral home, later moved to the south side of the Fremont Bridge where his former building still stands today, now modified to be an office building.

To find the Doric Lodge, start at the Lenin statue and walk northeast on the same block, to where the Doric Lodge entrance is facing North 36th Street.

Lenin in Fremont at the Holidays 2024

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The Lenin statue in Fremont at 3526 Fremont Place North, came from eastern Europe where the statue had been toppled after the demise of the Communist regime. In Fremont in Seattle, the statue represents irony, that Lenin now looks out over Fremont which is one of the most free and artistic neighborhoods of Seattle.

The location of the Lenin statue on a public square, lends itself to many celebrations and the Lenin statue is decorated accordingly. In 2024, Hanukkah begins in the same week as Christmas so lights of the Menorah will be added in a ceremony on Saturday, December 28, at 6:30 PM. Hanukkah is a celebration of freedom, resilience and triumph of light over darkness.

Menorah Lighting in Fremont 2024

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This year (2024) Hanukkah begins in the same week as Christmas, adding to the lights and celebrations of the season. At 6:30 PM on Saturday, December 28, there will be the first-ever Menorah Lighting in Fremont! The location will be at the Lenin statue, 3526 Fremont Place North. There is no better place than at the foot of Lenin to celebrate freedom, resilience and triumph of light over darkness.