You may have noticed that the new apartment complex going up at 45th and Interlake has a name now, Smith & Burns.
I puzzled about why they would call it that, and emailed my contacts at Mack Urban, but haven’t heard back.
Then, flicking through Flickr for a photo to use on another article, I came upon this, from the Washington State Archives:
The plot thickens! Why is that Shell station on Stone Way labeled “Smith + Burns”?
According to Historylink, “Smith Burns” was the name of the man who built the Smith Tower downtown in 1914. (According to Historylink, that’s the same “Smith” as in “Smith Corona”, but not the same Smith as in “Smith & Wesson”.)
But what’s the Wallingford connection? And why is it “Smith & Burns”?
Anyone?
If you’re thinking about moving, the Smith & Burns apartments are now listed on Craigslist, studios starting at $1,625 up through 2bd/2ba at $2,525.
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Just what we need. More housing that’s unaffordable to a large percentage of the population.
They are offering 2 BR units. The Prescott, another new building on Stone has 2 BRs for $2,100/mo. Given that getting a SF house around here means at minimum a $50k downpayment & mortgage of at least $2,500/mo, plus $5k in taxes on top of that, these apartments are not cheap but will be many families’ only opportunity to live here.
My property taxes are north of that and I don’t even have a house, and what I own is rather small. I notice every property tax increase proposed passes. I’m getting priced out of Seattle simply based on property taxes. I’ll move to an area that has lower property taxes. I guess that’s the only way to play the trump card of raise property taxes all you want Seattle but I won’t pay them because I’ll be in a lower tax county. Don’t worry though I’m sure some techie from Cali will take my place. This city is only really for the well to do.
Single family exclusionary zoning over large parts of the city plays a large part in making it unaffordable. If we want to be more affordable rather than less affordable than San Francisco we’ll abolish it citywide.
Are you saying to get rid of SF housing?! Like owning a home shouldn’t be an option any more?! How much are the developers paying you?!!?
The Kool-Aid is free, that’s all most of them are getting out of it.
@Erin No of course not. I am saying allow the same size of units allowed in SF zones but allow them to be duplexes, triplexes, or townhouses as well as single family detached homes. This is in fact the zoning under which my part of Wallingford was built (prior to 1957). There is a duplex on the corner, a duplex on the next block, and attached brick row houses 2 blocks away. These are all banned now.
Nice detective work, Jordan. I absolutely love the little timber framed Shell station building. The rents are ridiculous, but I like how they honored the past with the name. I’m selling my multi-unit soon and am hoping beyond hope the next buyer maintains reasonable rents. Or doesn’t build apodments.
The highest bidder will raise rents. That is just the way it works. The only thing you could do is give your tenants long term leases that keep rents low, but protecting your tenants like this will hurt the value of your property.
I just learned any lease over one year must be notarized to be valid. A landlord told me that they hoped to kick out their tenant early due to this fact.
Wow, I’ve never heard that before, neither when I was a tenant or now as a landlady. Can you supply a link to this? I’ve never notarized a lease in my life and that would be a pretty skeezy way to allow people to kick tenants out of their rentals 🙁
This looked real: http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/as-a-landlord–can-i-write-a-multi-year-lease-in-w-1448054.html
probably a better site. See fixed term leases.
http://www.solid-ground.org/Tenant/Pages/RentalAgreements.aspx
Thanks for the info. I see where I got confused. I only do annual leases, not multi-year, so notarization wouldn’t have been an issue for me. It’s kind of odd that it would be required for multi-year when it isn’t for a single year lease. I mean, as long as both parties sign a lease, that should make it a legal agreement. Whatever. Nice to know, regardless 🙂
I believe Smith & Burns is the Plat Lot name for that block.
It is, and it’s the whole block between 45th, 44th, Stone, and Woodlawn.
REALITY CHECK EVERYONE:
Still cheaper than almost all other coastal cities. Sorry, but true.
I thought it was a “Simpsons” reference.
Hi!
This post is like candy to a librarian.
I asked my friends in Special Collections to see what they could find out. Below is the response I received from Jade. You don’t have to know people to ask a librarian to dig up some info for you! Just use our Ask A Librarian service and your public librarians will get busy: https://www.spl.org/using-the-library/get-help/ask-a-librarian
Here is what Jade found:
Smith and Burns refers to the Smith and Burns addition which was established by Thomas G. Smith and Frank Burns Jr. in August 1889. They don’t appear to have any relation to the Smith Tower. Smith and Burns are listed in 1890 City Directory as follows: Smith & Burns (Thomas G. Smith, Francis Burns jr) Railroad contractors 610 3d. According to articles I found in Chronicling America, it looks like they came to Seattle in 1888 to as agents of the eastern railway company responsible for buiding the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway line which was to connect Seattle and Spokane: http://1.usa.gov/1MKZSJV. They dissolved their partnership in 1892: http://1.usa.gov/1LNtyX3.