The Lake Washington Ship Canal was completed in 1917 and the former small stream flowing westward past Fremont, was widened and deepened for the passage of larger vessels. Before that time there had been a much smaller channel and a bridge, and areas on the south side of the bridge were still considered part of Fremont. The new, wide channel caused a demarcation so that today, the south side of the Fremont Bridge is considered to be in the Queen Anne neighborhood.
In 1904 an ambitious young man, Jacob Bleitz, came to Seattle to set up his funeral home business. He had attended the Chicago College of Embalming in 1900, then set up business in Wichita, Kansas, for a time.
In Seattle, Jacob Bleitz gravitated to the Fremont neighborhood where he joined the Masonic group, the Doric Lodge. He accessed his business contacts there and opened his funeral home business in Fremont in 1906. Bleitz seemed to want to keep developing for better facilities. He moved to another intersection in Fremont and then, in 1921, he built his own building on the south side of the Fremont Bridge, at Florentia Street. The Bleitz building is today very visible in its location right next to the bridge.
Changes in cultural expectations of funeral services, such as a greater emphasis on cremation, have caused a decline in the number of mortuary facilities in Seattle. After the Bleitz business closed and the building was sold, a developer applied to tear it down and build a new office building there. This plan was stopped in part, by the historic landmarking of the building in 2017, under the City of Seattle Historic Preservation Program.
The Bleitz building was then sold to another developer who was willing to work with the historic preservation program. Permission was granted to demolish a “non-contributing” structure, a drive-up, on the west side of the building as it was not original. The western side of the property was available for a new building. The new building is joined to the Bleitz by a courtyard and the property has been renamed Fremont Crossing.
Sources:
Bleitz history: company photos in the Now and Then column of June 16, 2022.
Historic Landmark Nomination, Bleitz Funeral Home, March 1, 2017, Seattle Landmarks Board.
South of the Bridge in Fremont, blog article about the Bleitz and other developments.