Winters House: Door To Summer -- Historic Bellevue Mansion Opens To Public

House hours

The Winters House will be open daily to the public from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., beginning Saturday. A meeting room in the basement is available for public events, but a cost for rental has yet to be determined.

BELLEVUE - For many who drove by it, there was something haunting and majestic about the dilapidated house at 2102 Bellevue Way S.E. Even with smashed windows, a trash-strewn lawn and boarded-up doorways, it demanded to be noticed.

Perhaps it was the Spanish-eclectic design, which reflected a more romantic era, when Bellevue was quiet and rural and farther than a bridge drive away from Seattle.

Today, after a four-year restoration, the Winters House doesn't just demand notice. It can't escape it. The vibrant, rose-pink stucco mansion will open to the public Saturday.

A number of old photos are on display at the house, which will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily, along with a wildlife pond and boardwalk behind the house.

Built in the late 1920s by Frederick and Cecelia Winters, the house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. It is owned by the Bellevue Parks Department and sits amid Mercer Slough Nature Park's extensive trail system.

Besides being historic, the house was somewhat notorious, too. A man died in a fire on the property, and a woman was shot there. Eventually the house was abandoned, and age and neglect began to take their toll.

"It was once slated to be torn down, which would have been a shame," said Diana Ford, president of the Bellevue Historical Society, which shares office space at the house with Parks Department staffers.

Frederick Winters was a floral decorator who moved to Washington from New York in 1906. He met and married Cecelia Roedel, and along the fertile banks of Mercer Slough the couple soon built the Eastside's most successful floral business. They specialized in azaleas, daffodils and irises, and ultimately made a killing when a quarantine was placed on imported bulbs in 1926.

They built the house for $32,000, about five times the going rate for most similarly sized dwellings of the era. According to Ford, Cecelia Winters modeled the house after one she had seen in Portland.

Although the style may seem odd for Bellevue, the Latin American influence was popular at the time.

Because the ground along the slough was too boggy for expansion, the Winterses moved much of their operation to Kent and sold the house in 1943 to Frank and Anna Riepl. The couple paid $40,000 for the house and property.

In 1962, Anna Riepl was shot and wounded with a .22-caliber revolver held by a tenant, a 36-year-old Bellevue school librarian.

Riepl was stricken by Alzheimer's disease in 1975, and her husband died in 1977. She sold the home in 1980 to Jessica Longston for $333,000. For the next several years a succession of tenants took possession of the once-gracious house, paying as little as $450 a month for 13 rooms, hardwood floors and a tiled fireplace and kitchen.

Longston sold the house and 14 acres to the city in 1990 for $1.7 million. The money came from a countywide open-space measure passed by voters in 1989.

Restoration cost about $365,000, but it wasn't enough to pay for all of the furnishings and decorations that are needed to complete the project.

"We're looking for donations," Ford said. She can be reached at 462-2752.

Seattle Times East bureau reporter Nancy Montgomery contributed to this report.