Houseboats - By Dick Wagner
The first step in the Transportation grant project is to document and identify the unique history and stories of Lake Union that could be shared through exhibits and interpretative activities.
The founder of The Center from Wooden Boats, Dick Wagner, is documenting many of the compiling stories and the history of Lake Union, from his unique perspective of living and working on Lake Union for over three decades. These narratives are in draft form, and should be considered a work in progress. We welcome any thoughts, comments or stories you may have.
Houseboats
It’s ridiculous to think that a small lake in the center of a vibrant city could serve as an international airport. Its just as impossible to believe that a colony of 450 floating homes could exist on a lake that is not only a runway for seaplanes but is densely ringed with tall commercial and laboratory research buildings. Except in Seattle, residential neighborhoods are tucked into quiet corners and include playground, schools, and retail stores. Lake Union has probably the greatest diversity of waterfront and on water uses in America.
The seaplanes came first. Bill Boeings’ three planes had the lake to themselves in 1915. After the Locks and Ship Canal opened in 1917, the lake became a perpetual boat show, but the seaplanes never left.
Houseboats became popular summer homes on Lake Washington in the early 1900’s. They were the epitome of fun and relaxing getaways, tricked out with Victorian carpentry, ironwork and stained glass decorations. These seven or eight room mansions were clustered around the streetcar stops at the foot of Leschi and Madison Parks. The society pages of that era tell us about houseboat parties, music, and boating events put on by the houseboaters.
There were no party time houseboats in Lake Union in the early 1900’s. Only one was listed in the 190? Census. It belonged to Rodney Allback, a “river pilot.” When the locks and canal opened, the lakeshore suddenly transformed from a stately forest and wildlife preserve to a noisy, dusty, bustling industrial center. There were sawmills, log ponds, door and window factories, boatshops building yachts, boatshops building fishing boats, dry docks and piers for maritime commerce.
Industry meant jobs. Right on the lake, houseboats sprung up. They were small, symmetrical rectangles with decks on all sides. The roofs were gable or arched. Ornamentation was nil. They were cheap and simple floating homes. The floatation was red cedar logs, but even they were cheap. The houseboats used the cast-off logs from the surrounding sawmills because they either had lots of knots or were charred from forest fires. These logs, misfit for quality lumber floated just as well as the flawless logs. The charred ones actually were better floaters. The fire dried them out and the char sealed them.
The Lake Union houseboats fit the need of the investors that bought the submerged property between shoreline and harbor line for $10 per front foot in 1907. Renting moorage for houseboats was a high profit opportunity. The owner only needed to install a floating sidewalk. The moorage owner rented on a monthly basis, anxiously awaiting a more profitable opportunity.
The mill and boatshop worker could quickly build their homes. They moored them as closely as possible because their landlord wanted to maximize income. The small homes, as tightly packed as sardines in a can, did not look like a Norman Rockwell scene. And yet they were sought after by more than the mill and boatshop people.
There was a chemistry of snug, human scale, the wonders of the lake with its ever changing colors and reflections, the connection of the resident and migrating waterfowl, the vitality of the neighbors, close as dormitory residents, but still separated in floating cottages. The sense of seizing the moment because the landlords were on the lookout for better income, ?? Seattle was changing too fast. The lake houseboats soon drew in the writer, visual artists, musicians, students and those more inclined to philosophize than work. Their common denominators were a love of a full life and poverty.
Out of the mélange of Lake Union residents a houseboat culture began to evolve. It involved sharing responsibilities, skills, and ideas, within their tightly packed moorages. Each moorage became a village. There were maintenance parties, potluck dinners, and beer brewing gatherings. Houseboat moorages were islands of utopia in the midst of a city exploding with growth.
The moorages were growing too, some expanded into the publicly owned street ends and waterways. Some went beyond the harbor lines, into the navigable water. At some choke points, such as the Fremont and University Bridges, houseboats had to be temporarily moved to allow large ships to pass through. About 1200 houseboats were moored in Lake Union, Portage Bay, and the Ship Canal in 1957. Back in 1907, people purchased pieces of Lake Union with an idea that a big payoff was coming, but the month-to month moorage of houseboats prevailed.
Houseboats, Seattle style, needed ongoing work on flotation. The top logs got waterlogged and lost some buoyancy. The owner’s collection of National Geographic magazines was more ballast then needed. Rain increased the weight of the houseboat, as water vapor saturated the wooden roof, walls and decks.
Houseboaters ingeniously figured out how to add flotation. They built floating winches powered by hand or gas engines. The winch had a horizontal axle with a drum on each end for rope or steel cables. A new log would be brought alongside the original logs and continuous loops of cable would go around each end of the new log, run under the originals and back to the winch on the opposite side.
The winch rolled the new log under the old ones. The winch operator knew where the next floatation was needed and would count the bumps as the new log was dragged across the corduroy old log surface. When the log got to the right place. One end of each cable was cast off and pulled back to the winch. Eventually houseboats acquired an upside down pyramid of log flotation. Only in Seattle’s Lake Union could one see “Logs Put Under Houseboat” signs.
Although Lake Washington was lowered 9’ when the locks were completed, the Lake Washington colonies just moored off shore a bit and continued their sybaritic life style. During Prohibition some were brought into Portage Bay. Because of their elegant style and commodious space, the new arrivals became entertainment centers. Seattle police had unofficially designated Portage Bay as a tolerance zone. Once could buy alcohol and companionship at these place.
The Great Depression motivated many people to build houseboats on the Duwamish River. Living was cheap there. In the 1970’s the Port of Seattle purchased the moorage properties and evicted the houseboats.
In 1940 Seattle built a sewer line on its Lake Washington coast, ending the old houseboat colonies. They were to move to Lake Union, where there was no sewer, until 1967. The city had no rulebook on houseboat moorage sewer connections, so they let the houseboaters write their own rulebook. The city’s policy was, if it works, it’s approved. Hooking up to the sewer eliminated about half the houseboats, which were on publicly owned sites. The city would definitely not give permits to them. The city used its former asphalt plant site at South Lake Union to deconstruct the abandoned houseboats. Many were towed to South Lake union by the Corps of Engineers sternwheeler steamboat W.T. Preston or the City’s yellow landing craft Pelican Pete.
The summer houseboats of Lake Washington probably never needed a heat source, but the Lake Union ones did. The most common source of heat was stove oil. Some houseboats actually had monster cast iron ships stoves, which they used for cooking and heat. Others had heaters, which burned oil. They were about four feet tall and two feet square. The oil tank was usually a steel 55 gallon drum on the deck of the houseboats. Fuel was delivered by the world’s smallest tenders, Blondie and Dagwood.
These wooden vessels began their life as tenders for fish traps in Puget Sound. They hauled the salmon from the traps to the fish houses on Elliot Bay. When the traps were banned, the tenders became tankers. Overseeing public safety on the lake became the duty of the Fire Department, for good reason. Fires happen wherever wooden boats are built, and the jam-packed houseboats with their oil stoves were also accidents waiting to happen.
The Fire Department already had its big pumpers on Elliot Bay, the 1909 Duwamish, and the 1922 Alki. They needed a scout boat on Lake Union and chose a 16’ lapstrake open boat with an air-cooled gas engine and a top speed of a brisk walk. Each day a couple of firemen in blue work jeans and shirts and red suspenders would prowl the lake looking for hazards. If they saw a fire beginning they could stop at a nearby houseboat and call headquarters.
In the mid 1960’s Colleen Wagner was giving weekday evening oil painting instruction in a houseboat on Westlake Ave. The firemen stopped regularly to check for safety, have some coffee and cookies and admire the works of the student, all women. The Lake Union Fire Department matched perfectly with the scale and style of the houseboat villages. Eventually the public safely role was taken over by the Police Department. What generated the change was the appearance of water skiers on the lake. Complaints of boat and wharf damage due to the wakes of the speedboats alerted our city to the need for enforcement boats that were at least as fast as the water skiers. So came the Harbor Police and their base on the west side of Gas Works Park.
Houseboats came under siege at regular intervals. The common mantra was get rid of these freeloaders and their preposterous little hovels so the waterfront can be used for economic development. It was always assumed that a token colony would be allowed in Portage Bay.
In 1971 some things happened to change the plans for outing the houseboats and replacing them with high dividend commercial structures. It was the Shorelines Management Act. The Act recognized the limited amount of shoreline and the special value it had. The new state law pronounced that only water-needing uses were allowed on our navigable waters and on shore within 200 feet of water. Commercial, no water-needed use was banned. A marina could occur, but on Lake Union almost all the private property was submerged, and one couldn’t build a parking lot over or within 200’ of the water. Residential use was also forbidden.
Through the creation of the Floating Homes Association and the strategic genius of its Executive, Terry Pettus, the houseboat community lobbied for retaining the old and colorful houseboat community. The city and the state agencies were won over by the houseboaters persistent but well researched position and an exemption was given for the traditional moorages in Lake Union and Portage Bay. The houseboats were recognized as a quality of civic importance equal to Pioneer Square, and the Public Market. Arguably, the houseboats of Lake Union can be considered a metaphor of this city.
The Lake Union houseboats attract a special brand of people. The experiences of houseboat living leaves long lasting memories and effects that can’t be found elsewhere. Our children grew up on a Lake Union Houseboat. The first words of the first child were “quack quack.”
Dick Wagner
Houseboats became popular summer homes on Lake Washington in the early 1900’s. They were the epitome of fun and relaxing getaways, tricked out with Victorian carpentry, ironwork and stained glass decorations. These seven or eight room mansions were clustered around the streetcar stops at the foot of Leschi and Madison Parks. The society pages of that era tell us about houseboat parties, music, and boating events put on by the houseboaters.
There were no party time houseboats in Lake Union in the early 1900’s. Only one was listed in the 190? Census. It belonged to Rodney Allback, a “river pilot.” When the locks and canal opened, the lakeshore suddenly transformed from a stately forest and wildlife preserve to a noisy, dusty, bustling industrial center. There were sawmills, log ponds, door and window factories, boatshops building yachts, boatshops building fishing boats, dry docks and piers for maritime commerce.
Industry meant jobs. Right on the lake, houseboats sprung up. They were small, symmetrical rectangles with decks on all sides. The roofs were gable or arched. Ornamentation was nil. They were cheap and simple floating homes. The floatation was red cedar logs, but even they were cheap. The houseboats used the cast-off logs from the surrounding sawmills because they either had lots of knots or were charred from forest fires. These logs, misfit for quality lumber floated just as well as the flawless logs. The charred ones actually were better floaters. The fire dried them out and the char sealed them.
The Lake Union houseboats fit the need of the investors that bought the submerged property between shoreline and harbor line for $10 per front foot in 1907. Renting moorage for houseboats was a high profit opportunity. The owner only needed to install a floating sidewalk. The moorage owner rented on a monthly basis, anxiously awaiting a more profitable opportunity.
The mill and boatshop worker could quickly build their homes. They moored them as closely as possible because their landlord wanted to maximize income. The small homes, as tightly packed as sardines in a can, did not look like a Norman Rockwell scene. And yet they were sought after by more than the mill and boatshop people.
There was a chemistry of snug, human scale, the wonders of the lake with its ever changing colors and reflections, the connection of the resident and migrating waterfowl, the vitality of the neighbors, close as dormitory residents, but still separated in floating cottages. The sense of seizing the moment because the landlords were on the lookout for better income, ?? Seattle was changing too fast. The lake houseboats soon drew in the writer, visual artists, musicians, students and those more inclined to philosophize than work. Their common denominators were a love of a full life and poverty.
Out of the mélange of Lake Union residents a houseboat culture began to evolve. It involved sharing responsibilities, skills, and ideas, within their tightly packed moorages. Each moorage became a village. There were maintenance parties, potluck dinners, and beer brewing gatherings. Houseboat moorages were islands of utopia in the midst of a city exploding with growth.
The moorages were growing too, some expanded into the publicly owned street ends and waterways. Some went beyond the harbor lines, into the navigable water. At some choke points, such as the Fremont and University Bridges, houseboats had to be temporarily moved to allow large ships to pass through. About 1200 houseboats were moored in Lake Union, Portage Bay, and the Ship Canal in 1957. Back in 1907, people purchased pieces of Lake Union with an idea that a big payoff was coming, but the month-to month moorage of houseboats prevailed.
Houseboats, Seattle style, needed ongoing work on flotation. The top logs got waterlogged and lost some buoyancy. The owner’s collection of National Geographic magazines was more ballast then needed. Rain increased the weight of the houseboat, as water vapor saturated the wooden roof, walls and decks.
Houseboaters ingeniously figured out how to add flotation. They built floating winches powered by hand or gas engines. The winch had a horizontal axle with a drum on each end for rope or steel cables. A new log would be brought alongside the original logs and continuous loops of cable would go around each end of the new log, run under the originals and back to the winch on the opposite side.
The winch rolled the new log under the old ones. The winch operator knew where the next floatation was needed and would count the bumps as the new log was dragged across the corduroy old log surface. When the log got to the right place. One end of each cable was cast off and pulled back to the winch. Eventually houseboats acquired an upside down pyramid of log flotation. Only in Seattle’s Lake Union could one see “Logs Put Under Houseboat” signs.
Although Lake Washington was lowered 9’ when the locks were completed, the Lake Washington colonies just moored off shore a bit and continued their sybaritic life style. During Prohibition some were brought into Portage Bay. Because of their elegant style and commodious space, the new arrivals became entertainment centers. Seattle police had unofficially designated Portage Bay as a tolerance zone. Once could buy alcohol and companionship at these place.
The Great Depression motivated many people to build houseboats on the Duwamish River. Living was cheap there. In the 1970’s the Port of Seattle purchased the moorage properties and evicted the houseboats.
In 1940 Seattle built a sewer line on its Lake Washington coast, ending the old houseboat colonies. They were to move to Lake Union, where there was no sewer, until 1967. The city had no rulebook on houseboat moorage sewer connections, so they let the houseboaters write their own rulebook. The city’s policy was, if it works, it’s approved. Hooking up to the sewer eliminated about half the houseboats, which were on publicly owned sites. The city would definitely not give permits to them. The city used its former asphalt plant site at South Lake Union to deconstruct the abandoned houseboats. Many were towed to South Lake union by the Corps of Engineers sternwheeler steamboat W.T. Preston or the City’s yellow landing craft Pelican Pete.
The summer houseboats of Lake Washington probably never needed a heat source, but the Lake Union ones did. The most common source of heat was stove oil. Some houseboats actually had monster cast iron ships stoves, which they used for cooking and heat. Others had heaters, which burned oil. They were about four feet tall and two feet square. The oil tank was usually a steel 55 gallon drum on the deck of the houseboats. Fuel was delivered by the world’s smallest tenders, Blondie and Dagwood.
These wooden vessels began their life as tenders for fish traps in Puget Sound. They hauled the salmon from the traps to the fish houses on Elliot Bay. When the traps were banned, the tenders became tankers. Overseeing public safety on the lake became the duty of the Fire Department, for good reason. Fires happen wherever wooden boats are built, and the jam-packed houseboats with their oil stoves were also accidents waiting to happen.
The Fire Department already had its big pumpers on Elliot Bay, the 1909 Duwamish, and the 1922 Alki. They needed a scout boat on Lake Union and chose a 16’ lapstrake open boat with an air-cooled gas engine and a top speed of a brisk walk. Each day a couple of firemen in blue work jeans and shirts and red suspenders would prowl the lake looking for hazards. If they saw a fire beginning they could stop at a nearby houseboat and call headquarters.
In the mid 1960’s Colleen Wagner was giving weekday evening oil painting instruction in a houseboat on Westlake Ave. The firemen stopped regularly to check for safety, have some coffee and cookies and admire the works of the student, all women. The Lake Union Fire Department matched perfectly with the scale and style of the houseboat villages. Eventually the public safely role was taken over by the Police Department. What generated the change was the appearance of water skiers on the lake. Complaints of boat and wharf damage due to the wakes of the speedboats alerted our city to the need for enforcement boats that were at least as fast as the water skiers. So came the Harbor Police and their base on the west side of Gas Works Park.
Houseboats came under siege at regular intervals. The common mantra was get rid of these freeloaders and their preposterous little hovels so the waterfront can be used for economic development. It was always assumed that a token colony would be allowed in Portage Bay.
In 1971 some things happened to change the plans for outing the houseboats and replacing them with high dividend commercial structures. It was the Shorelines Management Act. The Act recognized the limited amount of shoreline and the special value it had. The new state law pronounced that only water-needing uses were allowed on our navigable waters and on shore within 200 feet of water. Commercial, no water-needed use was banned. A marina could occur, but on Lake Union almost all the private property was submerged, and one couldn’t build a parking lot over or within 200’ of the water. Residential use was also forbidden.
Through the creation of the Floating Homes Association and the strategic genius of its Executive, Terry Pettus, the houseboat community lobbied for retaining the old and colorful houseboat community. The city and the state agencies were won over by the houseboaters persistent but well researched position and an exemption was given for the traditional moorages in Lake Union and Portage Bay. The houseboats were recognized as a quality of civic importance equal to Pioneer Square, and the Public Market. Arguably, the houseboats of Lake Union can be considered a metaphor of this city.
The Lake Union houseboats attract a special brand of people. The experiences of houseboat living leaves long lasting memories and effects that can’t be found elsewhere. Our children grew up on a Lake Union Houseboat. The first words of the first child were “quack quack.”
Dick Wagner