The Roycroft: A quest for independence at the confluence of speculation, regulation, and panic.

The Roycroft.  August, 2015.

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Seattle circa 1899. Roy & Roy Mill circled in Red.

In 1899 the quickest route to West Seattle was by train over a wooden trestle that ran along the northern edge of the Duwamish Bay tide flats crossing what would later become Harbor Island. That May, Edward Roy, his older brother Charles, and father Lucien would have taken this train out to the trestle’s midpoint to tour the lumber mill they would purchase later that month.

Peering out the train’s window to his left while his brother and father talked business, Edward would likely have been distracted by the countless array of shifting channels and tide pools glistening over hundreds of acres of mud. It was here that he saw one of many opportunities to reinvent himself instead of living in his brother’s and father’s shadow.

It was here, and elsewhere throughout the city, that Seattle would experience one of the greatest real estate booms in its history granting Edward both the independence from his family he so dearly desired and a refuge from the coming collapse of the lumber market. This is the story of Edward Roy and The Roycroft Apartments on Harvard Ave E.

Prologue

Imlay City, Michigan. Early 20th Century.

 Edward Bentley Roy was born in 1870 to farmers Lucien and Euphemia Roy and lived in the small town of Imlay City, Michigan, a stop on what was then the Port Huron and Lake Michigan Railroad. As teenagers, he and his older brother Charles would have heard stories of adventure and good pay out west as the trains passed through town carrying freshly milled lumber to eastern markets.

Charles, evidently, couldn’t pass up the opportunity, because the 1915 edition of The Mississippi Valley Lumberman (a trade magazine) reveals that he co-founded the “Roy & Neiharge” lumber company in 1888. Yet it seems unlikely that a 20-year-old farmer, would have suddenly become president of his own lumber company. So he must have joined a logging camp or lumber mill circa 1885 and worked his way up meeting Neiharge along the way.

After six years though, Nieharge retired so Charles convinced his father Lucien to leave Michigan and take his place.  The company was promptly renamed “Roy & Roy” and the family business was born.

Enter Edward Roy

Imlay City train depot, late 19th century.

By 1892, Edward had moved out of his childhood home, taken a job as a rail depot agent in town and married a Miss Jennie Wills that October with whom he lived in a house near the corner of 3rd and Caulkins. But sadly, after only a few years of married life, both Jennie and their infant daughter passed away.

Undoubtedly devastated, Edward probably spent some time thereafter gripped in depression—possibly feeling a little resentful and jealous of his family’s distant success. Thus he lingered in an effort to prove he could remain independent from his family.

But it seems he eventually swallowed his pride and reunited with them to escape the pain (possibly after attempting to prospect for gold in the Klondike in 1897) because he finally reemerged in 1898 when the Seattle City Directory listed his occupation as bookkeeper for Roy & Roy and his residence at 802 3^rd Ave—a block away from his family. Clearly he still needed some space. But despite his hesitation, he proved himself useful to the family business because when Roy & Roy became a corporation in August of 1899, he became its secretary and treasurer.

 Edward Roy the Lumberman

Roy & Roy logo circa 1900. “Clears” are shingles without knots.

Edward wasted no time filling his new role and went out taking the punches to defend his family’s business. A common practice among associated lumber mills in the region was to shut down for the winter when demand was low and wait for higher prices in spring when demand returned. Roy & Roy refused to play ball by keeping its mills open and lowering prices. When accused of being a scalping concern, Edward retorted in a Seattle PI press release that the association’s theory was “nonsense” and demonstrated that a profit could still be made.

Their stubborn independence paid off. At the time of the dispute, Roy & Roy operated their tide flats mill and had an interest in 18 others. By 1904 they were operating 6 mills with an interest in 40 others and had even purchased a staggering 35,000 acres of timberland near Colima, Mexico with plans to build several mills and a branch railroad to deliver their product.

Roy & Roy’s tide flats mill circa 1905. Courtesy Seattle Times.

 It was during this time that Edward started settling into his new life in Seattle. He joined a variety of clubs and began rubbing elbows with all manner of Seattle’s leading businessmen and civic leaders. He even bought himself a nice home in 1905 at 528 16^th Ave N right in the heart of Capitol Hill marking the beginning of his foray into real-estate.

Edward Roy the Real-Estate Upstart

With all the recent leveling, filling, and platting of land occurring throughout Seattle, real-estate entrepreneurs had begun feverishly speculating on land value. They bought and sold property so rapidly and at record profits that the newspapers could hardly keep up. Edward eagerly entered the fray.

Between 1905 and 1907 Edward bought and sold property all over Seattle on a weekly basis, but he wasn’t speculating solely for short-term profit.   He wanted to develop for the long term, particularly someplace where the family mill couldn’t cast a shadow. That place was Capitol Hill. So when he came across the home of Mrs. Clara Webb Vinnedge at the corner of Harvard and Thomas on June 4th 1906, he purchased it for $10,000. He then hired architect Henderson Ryan to design the new building that would take its place.

Drawing of The Roycroft circa 1906.

 Ryan’s design is described as a hybrid combining the Richardsonian Romanesque style with its high foundation, rusticated arch over the front door, and corner turrets and Spanish Mission revival style with its decorative wrought iron, Spanish tile roofs, and scalloped parapets. Original amenities included wall beds, a garbage elevator, telephones, refrigerators, gas range ovens, electric bells, speaking tubes, and two central light courts.

Henderson Ryan, LEJ Photo Collection

The design choice is as unusual as it is fascinating. One can view The Roycroft’s divisive styles as a physical manifestation of Edward’s lifelong desire to escape the gravity of his familial foundation perhaps only at best to rise above it and rest firmly upon it.

In a similar way for Ryan, this project along with a few others that year also marked a clear division from his early career designing single family homes. He later designed the building that now houses The Canterbury in a style very similar to The Roycroft.

Edward then hired contractor N.P. Douglas to build the Roycroft starting in August or September 1906. The timing was perfect because it appears Edward may have shipped off to Chicago shortly thereafter to attend a hearing of the interstate commerce commission in what was one of the most sensational legal battles happening between the lumber and railroad interests at that time.

Run For The Hill: The Panic of 1907

Seattle Times news articles from 1906 and 1907.

Throughout 1906, floods along with shortages of train cars and engines and the skilled labor needed
to build them, left the railroads dangerously ill-equipped to keep up with the vast quantity of goods waiting to be shipped east. By January 1907, the situation was so dire that the Northern Pacific railroad placed an indefinite embargo on lumber products just so they could focus on shipping perishable goods. Infuriated and desperate for survival, the lumber mills had united and taken their grievances to the interstate commerce commission. Both sides exchanged heavy blows, but neither came out a clear victor. Then by October of 1907, economic panic struck resulting in a series of bank runs in New York and other major eastern cities effectively destroying the demand for western lumber for the near future.

This time around, Roy & Roy had no choice but to shut down their mills and join the battle. And while Edward was in Chicago doing his part, he certainly couldn’t have had any illusions about it. Through experience and a unique perspective of emotional distance, he probably saw it coming, because he clearly had an exit strategy and his family followed suit. By the time the panic struck, everyone in the family was living comfortably with their own home on Capitol Hill. So one can imagine the smug sense of self-satisfaction and confidence Edward would have had at this point.

And he brought this confidence with him to Chicago where he met his second wife Clara—also a widower—taking up temporary residence there until their marriage in Vancouver B.C. on November 11, 1907. When he returned to Seattle, he (and his brother Charles) retired from the family business, leaving it to their father and younger brother Clyde.

“If you think you’d like to be a Roycrofter” — Early Residents of The Roycroft

Circa 1900. Courtesy Seattle Times.

The earliest known residents were George Lamping and his wife Edith Denny who took an apartment there in June 1907. George was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and member of the Washington National Guard. He later became King County auditor and a Washington State senator. Edith had studied at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and traveled extensively in Europe. The Seattle Times notes that Edith threw a bridge party for 16 people at their apartment in September 1907.

Circa 1910. Courtesy Seattle Times

Ernest Everett, also a veteran of the Spanish-American War and a former Minnesota National Guard member, was a talented and renowned tailor who lived there with his wife Pauline and their infant son from 1909-1910. Their residence ended abruptly when Everett skipped town after Pauline had apparently blackened his eyes and horsewhipped a client of his (Jessie Vanderwerker) with whom she believed Everett was having an affair. Even though he denied it all in the divorce proceedings, Everett ended up becoming Jessie’s third husband in October of 1910. A biography of Everett in Bagley’s History of Seattle, suspiciously excludes the sensationalized affair.

Gamage circa 1917. Image, Seattle Times.

Finally, in 1917 a man known only as J.A. Gamage, a fiddle player, also lived at The Roycroft. He had owned his fiddle since 1867 and said he “wouldn’t part with it for anything.” Apparently, the “barn floor” pieces were always his favorites to perform. No other record of him could be found.
However, Seattle City Directory records the residence of an Orlando Gamage on 3rd Ave employed as a violin maker from 1906 to 1911. They were very likely related.

Edward Roy: Landlord and Real-Estate Developer

After 1907, Roy continued to develop property on and off Capitol Hill and lived in affluence and leisure. The Roycroft alone grossed him $1000 per month and he passed much of his time watching baseball. He ritually attended games and took the sports writers out on the town afterward. His wife Clara was also very social; she hosted several bridge parties at the Sorrento Hotel and in her own home complete with violin solos to entertain her guests.

Edward Roy Circa 1910.  Image: Seattle Times.

Unfortunately this was not a happy time in their lives because on March 13, 1914 Clara finally filed for divorce and a restraining order. She accused Edward of being frequently intoxicated, verbally abusive, and of beating her on one occasion in August of 1913. Edward denied all of the charges and succeeded in having the restraining order lifted so he could gather his personal possessions and move out. In the end, Clara won the house, their electric car, and $75 per month in alimony. Soon thereafter she sold the house and moved to New York where she remarried years later.
  
Whether and to what extent her accusations were true can never be known. Might she have exaggerated circumstances or outright fabricated them to maximize her alimony as Edward would want us to believe? Maybe, but given Edward’s troubled past, his reported alcoholism and violent behavior seem fairly plausible as well.

In any case, faced with personal defeat he did exactly as he had done after the tragic loss of his first wife, he escaped into the family business. While his marriage was failing he quietly returned to Roy & Roy as assistant manager and less than a year after his divorce, he married Lucy Bucklin, 17 years his junior and wealthy heiress of the Bucklin Lumber Company. Their first and only son, Edward Jr. was born on June 12, 1916 the same year the E.B. Roy Lumber Company opened for business.

His hands now full, he hired a woman named Jane Buchanan to manage the Roycroft until 1922 when he sold it to Samuel Weinstein, a sheisty San Francisco real-estate broker, and retired for good. Edward died 7 years later at his summer home in Alderwood Manor.  He was only 59 years old.

So it would seem that no matter how much Edward wished it so, he could never fully escape his roots.  Lumber was in his blood until the day he died and while he managed go about it his own way, he could never deny that fact just as The Roycroft predicted.

Epilogue: Roycroft Post Roy

Circa 1935.  Image: Seattle Times

Weinstein, wasn’t too invested in the Roycroft and resold it two months later to the even sheistier real-estate broker named August Mehlhorn Jr. head of the big real-estate firm Osner & Mehlhorn. Both men eventually saw their day in court. Weinstein was later fined $55,000 in a San Francisco court for a fraudulent trade he made in 1925. In 1935 after five years a fugitive in San Jose, CA, Mehlhorn was sentenced 30 years in prison for tax shortages, one charge of embezzlement, and 7 counts of grand larceny owing over a million dollars to hundreds of creditors. All of his assets were seized and auctioned off including the Roycroft.

The Roycroft, 1937.  Courtesy WA State Archives.

Since those days, the Roycroft itself has changed a great deal. Its outer brick façade is nearly sealed over in paint, the decorative parapets and conical turret tops have been removed, and the central light courts have been sealed. The current owner, Tom Graham, purchased the building in 1976 and despite being the one to install its sprinkler systems, he was tragically the first owner to suffer not one, but two fires within its walls during its near 110-year history.

The Shriners 41st Annual Session of The Imperial Council: July 12 - 17, 1915

While in between my feature articles, I decided to take a brief tangent to see what was happening in Capitol Hill this week one hundred years ago.  It turns out the Shriners, an international fraternity founded in 1870 and associated with Freemasonry, were having their 41st annual Imperial Council in Seattle.  

A whole slew of visiting Shriners were reportedly convinced that the Seattle Shriners had outdone all others in their effort to host the the greatest annual session to date.  Most, if not all, local hotels were booked solid--many shriners stayed in parked trains.  Meanwhile many local businesses were selling all kinds of outfits and souvenirs.  The festivities featured numerous performances, dances, parades, and exotic animals.

Volunteer Park circa 1915.  Seattle Public Library

In Capitol Hill, The Seattle Times reports that Volunteer Park was the site of "one of the most noteworthy open air receptions ever tendered in the west" including live music, singing, and a "number of difficult drill sessions" performed by the women of the shrine.

(Original article and additional images below)

Two articles from The Seattle Times juxtaposed from left to right, July 14 and 11, 1905.

Seattle Times June 6, 1915 Anticipated need for additional accommodations.

Seattle Times July 9, 1915 Cheasty's Shriners ad

Seattle Times June 11, 1915 Frederick & Nelson Ad

Shriners 2nd Ave Parade July 13, 1915 UW Special Collections

Postcard of Shriners 2nd Ave Parade July 13, 1915. via the flickr stream of

Brett Sandström

The Chanslor & Lyon Building: The Golden House of Auto Row.

Chanslor & Lyon Building at 12th & Madison, Dec. 15, 1920. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives.

Popular Mechanics, 1915

Before 1912, your gas-powered Ford lit the often-precarious road ahead with nothing but acetylene gas headlamps and required a hand crank to start the engine.  However, that year, everything changed when Charles Kettering and Henry Leland designed and built the first electric starter and lighting system. 

If you lived in Seattle and wanted the upgrade, chances are you would purchase the Gray & Davis model from what was then claimed to be the largest automotive equipment retailers and distributors in the world: the Chanslor & Lyon Company (C&L).  

Waller Chanslor and Phil Lyon circa 1916. LA Times

Founded in 1904 in Los Angeles by Waller G. Chanslor and Phillip H. Lyon, it opened a branch in Seattle in 1908 that steadily expanded and outgrew the 20,000 square feet of floor space in its second location at 10th Avenue and Pike Street -- the building now occupied by Comet Tavern and Lost Lake Café. 

Most impressed by this growth, Chanslor visited in May 1919 to plot out the next phase of expansion in the Pacific Northwest: a custom designed state-of-the-art facility to fit his company’s needs. 

Henry Bittman 1950.

Within a few weeks, C&L purchased a tract of land from H. M Schweppe, Harry Krutz and the estate of David Keith (deceased) for roughly $25,000.  Thereafter, they hired local engineer Henry Bittman to design the new facility, which is now the southwest wing of Trace Lofts.   

Four years later, Bittman would become a registered architect and go on to design many prominent downtown buildings including the Terminal Sales Building, Eagles Temple and the final addition to the King County Courthouse. (His Wallingford home recently went up for auction.)

Bittman's drawing, 1919. Seattle Times

Bittman’s design called for a three-story, semi-triangular structure of yellow brick to fit the irregular intersection of 12^th, Madison and Union.  Both the roof and the sill below the second-story windows would be lined with terra-cotta; the first floor ceiling would reach 19 feet.  All told it cost $150,000 and provided more than double the amount of floor space. 

Noyes, 1923.

C&L vice president Charles F. Noyes was the first man to oversee business within the walls designed by Bittman.  Noyes, born on April 13, 1869 in Boston Massachusetts, moved out to San Francisco with his family in 1880.  In 1896, he co-founded the Boswell & Noyes Drug Company with his brother-in-law Frank Boswell, his sister Nellie, and his wife Nettie before joining C&L in 1916. 

The most significant characteristic of the building Noyes would come to manage was its size.  It was C&L’s largest facility and they claimed it was the largest devoted to automotive equipment in America. 

A substantial claim indeed and, while quite possibly true, one cannot deny the sense of urgency it carries.  It suggests that the automotive market was very competitive and growing astronomically — particularly in Seattle and if you didn’t act quickly and boldly, you’d be left behind. 

Beckett Brothers' University Garage, 1919. Seattle Times.

And that’s precisely what all the big players were trying to avoid for only seven months prior to C&L’s opening day on 12^th Avenue; a different company opened a similarly sized facility at 45^th & Brooklyn (most likely what is now Hotel Deca), boasting that it was the largest in the Pacific Northwest.  Clearly C&L had just one-upped them. 

This competitive nature found expression in recreational activities as well.  By 1924, there probably wasn’t a single automobile business in Seattle (including C&L) who didn’t have a bowling and/or baseball team or whose members didn’t play golf. 

In fact, Noyes himself hit the golf links religiously and the C&L baseball team went on to clinch the Auto Row division championship in 1926. 

John Kennedy

Company logo, 1926.

Less conventional competitions also took place. In the summer of 1923 John A. Kennedy, founder of Ken Tools, had been touring the U.S. in his 1917 D-45 Buick, parading his title as the “champion tire changer” using his company’s recently developed “Pacific Rim Tool.” When he came to Seattle, he naturally visited C&L to display his handiwork.  Apparently unimpressed with Kennedy’s showy self-assuredness, a C&L employee, William Dickson, took Kennedy’s “world record” by changing six tires in just under four minutes in a competition held at Pantages Theatre a few weeks later.  Most of which was probably an extensive publicity stunt.
 
The timing was also perfect and perhaps even planned.  Only two months prior Noyes had announced that C&L would begin manufacturing its own line of tires.  He claimed that the West Coast’s climate and direct access to rubber and cotton imports made it the most logical choice.

However, just when it seemed there wasn’t a new height C&L couldn’t reach, trouble lay within its own walls. Seattle branch janitor Ulysses Campbell, was arrested on Aug. 6, 1923 for slowly stealing $10,000 worth of merchandise.  He plead guilty on Nov. 3 after returning 90 percent of it and claiming he’d been refused a raise so he determined to steal it.  He was sentenced to two to 12 years in prison.   

The very next day, Noyes, undoubtedly distraught, announced his retirement and moved back to California soon thereafter.  At 54 and ailing in health, he was clearly ready to call it a day.  He died seven years later.  As for Campbell, he was ironically killed when a car hit him at the corner of 23^rd and Thomas 17 years later. He was 61 years old. 

Despite the setbacks, business continued steadily in Seattle.  At a 1926 employee convention, C&L planned to nearly double its 1925 sales quota and it likely succeed because two years later the increasingly popular Pennzoil made C&L its official distributor in the Pacific Northwest. 

But unfortunately, this success was short lived.  Only four months later, C&L lost that title after suddenly closing its Portland branch and the closures didn’t stop there.  The following January, C&L sold its remaining holdings in the Pacific Northwest. 

Apparently, C&L had gone public in 1928 in order to finance an “aggressive expansion program” in California by buying out smaller businesses there.  To this end, it deemed it necessary to exit the Pacific Northwest market.  Thus ending its tenure at the golden house. 

Bekins Moving and Storage, 1937. WA State Archives.

However, the building would remain an attractive facility. The Nagelvoort-Stearns Cadillac Dealership across the street expanded there before eventually passing that torch on to Bekins Moving & Storage in 1935.  Ownership and use of the building would continue to change hands over the next 70 years as the building slowly decayed.  

 In 2008, developer Ted Schroth brought the building new life upon reopening it as Trace Lofts making it the home of 42 condos and multiple businesses including Tavern Law: a 1920s themed establishment with an upstairs speakeasy paying homage to building’s glory days.  In it, a working replica of a 1920s mechanical television my friends and I built sits on display.

Trace Lofts, June, 2015.  Photo by Tom Heuser

The Flemington Apartments: Best When Viewed Askew

The Flemington Apartments circa 1937.  Courtesy WA State Archives.

There’s a technique well-known to astronomers called “Averted vision” by which distant nebulae are often more easily observed when viewed in our peripheral vision. I’m quite familiar with it myself, both as an occasional stargazer and because of a party I threw for The Flemington, which unexpectedly turned into an extensive historical research project: the sort of thing I’ve always been interested in doing. And the initially mysterious “J. Fleming” “pioneer businessman” who had The Flemington built in his name, applied this technique in his own life.

Seattle Times February 11, 1924

On his building’s opening day, Feb. 11, 1924, he revealed to the Seattle Times that it was “the result of several years of careful planning… and the product of [his] dreams.” Yet for much of his adult life he wasn’t even in the real-estate business, but rather in the grocery business and a successful one at that.

Fleming owned and operated several grocery stores on Capitol Hill with his brothers and his business partner, Robert Moore, during those “several years” leading up to The Flemington (now “The Capitol Building,” 906 E John St.). Then, when he generated enough profit, he invested it into real-estate. Proof that when people place what they desire in the periphery it can sometimes become even more tangible. Yet, there’s more to the story.

The early years
Joseph Fleming was born on June 18, 1880 to James and Anne Fleming and baptized in the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the quaint and remote village of Ballymoney, Ireland where they raised race horses during a time of widespread agitation for home rule (before the creation of Northern Ireland circa 1921) and land reform following the Long Depression.

Fleming, by then, was the youngest of four and, as Protestants living in north Ireland, chances are they weren’t invested in local politics. Thus they had little incentive to stay. So gradually they began moving to the U.S.; Fleming himself hopped on a ship bound for New York City in 1901.

126 N Broadway circa 1937. Courtesy WA State Archives.

Joseph Fleming circa 1900? Courtesy Moore Family

His first stop stateside was Baltimore where he took up an apprenticeship in tailoring and raced horses before making his way to Seattle by 1910, when he was living at a boarding house at 126 N. Broadway (where the light rail station will be). His occupation: “grocery salesman.” In the intervening years, his older brother John had already been running his own grocery business in Philadelphia since the 1890s. So it’s very possible Joseph passed through spending a few years there, working hard, learning the business, and saving some money so he could start his own business here in Seattle. And that he did.


Pioneer grocer

100-104 N Broadway circa 1937. Courtesy WA State Archives.

In 1911, Fleming rented a home at 104 N Broadway and the adjacent storefront (on the NE corner at Denny) from the owners Captain John Taylor, a civil war veteran and city councilman, and his wife, Clara, who both ran a business as pension attorneys.

Fleming invited several of his siblings to join him and opened his first store: the Fleming Cash Grocery. And business flourished. By October of 1915, he operated four stores alongside one of his most trusted and hard-working clerks turned business partner and brother-in-law, Robert Moore. Their competitive edge was to offer lower prices by eliminating delivery service from all but their flagship store at 100 N Broadway.

Prosperity, piety and patriotism
Business at the renamed Fleming & Moore grocery stores prospered into the 1920s, so much so, that Fleming became rather generous with his money, which offers a rare and fascinating glimpse at his values. He was devoutly Presbyterian. He was known to frequently donate large sums to his local church and shortly after Armistice Day (Nov 11, 1918), he donated $50 (worth $685 today) to the Thanksgiving Day Victory Fund – an effort lead by his church to christianize the U.S. Constitution following WWI in order to, it was believed, reduce the likelihood of future war. And when he wasn’t giving away money, he always had an extra bible on hand to give to those whom he believed would benefit from it.

And he was similarly patriotic; he was an official sponsor of the Conference Committee on National Preparedness, an effort to “bring to justice those who plot against the nation.” Being so absorbed in the growth of his business and supporting his church and adopted country, who would suspect that he was dreaming of anything else?

Real-estate upstart

Riley's drawing. Courtesy Dept. of Planning and Dev.

However, on June 26, 1922, he made a business proposition to the widowed Margaret Albiez for the purchase of her property at the corner of Broadway and John for a lump sum of $18,550, equivalent to over $261,000 today. In cash. In the following months, he hired architect Howard Riley to draw up the plans. Contractor Andrew Mowat handled construction. Together, they broke earth in April of 1923 on the apartment building that remains today.

When complete, The Flemington Apartments would reach five stories tall and dominate the Broadway roofline for nearly a century thereafter. Every unit included marble and hardwood floors and a radio, and there even used to be a rooftop garden, community library and ample basement storage. It was one of the most opulent installments the city had ever seen.

Legal troubles and nostalgia
On that glorious day in April of 1923, Fleming must have undoubtedly felt a rush of confidence and exuberance as he footed his shovel into the soil at 200 N Broadway. Surely a sign that nothing could spoil his moment of grace — not even legal trouble.
Dairy Delivery Inc. (DDI) took him to court in March over an unpaid debt of $785.97. Fleming refused to pay and filed a counter-complaint accusing DDI of breaching a contract and fixing prices, making them responsible for lost profits and additional damages.

If there ever was a contract it must have been verbal because the jury ruled in favor of DDI in October for lack of evidence. Fleming and Moore attempted to dispute the verdict, but eventually gave in and paid the debt in January. Most likely, it wasn’t worth fighting given that The Flemington was due to open the following month. And it opened without a hitch despite the legal setback. It was a grand production with a full page in The Seattle Times devoted to promoting all of its features. One of its first and most known tenants would be Manning’s Coffee shop.

Perhaps the recent court ruling had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth because business operations shifted dramatically hereafter. Fleming and Moore split the business and began operating independently. Fleming then entrusted his own share to his brother William and focused on his new venture.

 128 N Broadway circa 1937. Courtesy WA State Archives

This may also have been a time of reflection for Fleming because while he was busy fulfilling his dream and fighting anyone who would stand in his way, he quietly took out a mortgage on a home at 126 N Broadway, his former boarding house, curiously enough. Perhaps, he was growing a bit nostalgic. Gradually, he and his brothers moved in.

Fleming seemed to grow even more nostalgic when he soon discovered that property management wasn’t his cup of tea. So he hired someone else to manage The Flemington Apartments and returned to the grocery business with his family in 1928. A business they’d continue to run well into the 1940s at 128 N. Broadway.

Crime wave and passing the torch
From the late 1920s into the 1930s, the Manning’s chain became a popular target citywide for criminals looking to line their pockets with some extra cash. Manning’s Coffee at The Flemington, was no exception.

From October of 1934 to August 1936, there were at least six robberies, often with the same clerk at the store. In fact, it almost comically became a matter of routine, when the store’s manager Paula Rede reported that she wasn’t frightened at having a pistol pointed at her for the third time, such that one might wonder if it were a conspiracy.

In any case, Fleming eventually sold The Flemington to White & Bollard Inc. on Dec. 12, 1945, who would rename it the Winters Building. It remained so until its sale in 1991 to its current owner Franklin Tseng who renamed it the Capitol Building.

The later years

After the sale of The Flemington, Fleming still had exclusive access to one of the corner apartments overlooking Broadway.  He stayed there frequently, undoubtedly to look out over Broadway as he pondered one of his many subsequent business ventures, the details of which remain vague. However, one thing was for certain, according to his grandnephew Gordon, wherever he saw a dollar, there was likely ten more beneath it and so he was never in want.

Except when it came to travelling. By the early 1960s, Pan Am had only recently began flying its 707 jets, so Fleming purchased an open ticket, which apparently was big news because a Seattle newspaper wanted to know what a man in his 80s was doing traveling the world.  So they drove down to Tacoma where he’d been living with his grandnephew to interview him, but they were too late.

Fleming in Tacoma, Wa. Age 91. From MOHAI

He was already in Australia. From there he went to India, then to the Middle East to visit the holy sites and on to much of Europe where he concluded his trip with his regular visit to Ireland. That paper was the Seattle PI and they didn't catch up to him until 1971. Five years later, he died “a beloved uncle” on October 29, 1976. He was 96 years old.

So what was it? Was the fulfillment of his dream not all he built it up to be? Was he yearning to relive his glory days as a pioneer grocer? Or maybe erecting a lasting monument to his legacy was all he needed and he eventually thought it best to return it where it had originally been and had served him best: to the periphery.

*Special thanks to Gordon Fleming who passed away two days after I interviewed him for this article.  May he rest in peace.*