HistoryLink Tours

This English Tudor style brick, stucco, and half-timber mansion was built for lumber and real estate developer C.D. Stimson over two years, 1899-1901, and was designed by Kirtland Cutter of the Spokane firm, Cutter & Malmgren. The exterior shows off hand-adzed timbers, sawn decorative bargeboards, and mock rafter ends. Cutter’s English design, while gaining considerable popularity elsewhere in the country by 1898, was just beginning to make its appearance on the West Coast.

Cutter was responsible for the complete decoration of the interior from wall colors, fabrics, and furniture, down to the most minute finish details. Rooms took inspiration from British, French, Middle Eastern, and Native American sources. Showpieces include a Gothic hearth supported with hand carved lions and copper and steel dragon andirons, a plastered Neoclassical parlor, a dining room with sycamore paneling, scenes of medieval court life painted on corduroy above the wainscoting, and an Italian blue/gold glass tiled fireplace with carved leaf and vine mantel. The well-preserved interiors honestly represent the lifestyles of the affluent on First Hill at the turn-of-the twentieth century. It can be viewed by appointment, www.preservewa.org.

The Stimsons moved to a larger estate in The Highlands, and in 1915, the house was purchased by shipping and banking magnate Joshua Green. When the Greens passed away, the house was acquired in 1975 by Historic Seattle and later resold with protective covenants. It was purchased by Priscilla Collins, granddaughter of C.D. and Harriet Stimson, in 1986. Major upgrades were done under her direction and the property was gifted to the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation in 2001, its current steward. In addition to serving as their offices, the mansion offers meeting, wedding, and event space year-round. It is a Seattle Landmark and listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

In the vicinity:

FIRST HILL PARK, just north of the Stimson-Green mansion, was formerly the site of the Josiah Collins residence. Collins, chief of the city’s volunteer fire department at the time of Seattle’s “Great Fire” of 1889, would become Priscilla “Patsy” Collins’s father-in-law. The park was developed in 1987, recently renovated, and sits on a quarter-acre parcel, providing an urban resting spot in a neighborhood that lacks open space.