Neighborly Invitation For A Respite -- Kirkland Bench Put In For Passers-By

KIRKLAND

Summing up the character of a place can be tough.

It can be a combination of conscious and subconscious messages, like street graffiti or fenced yards.

That may be why George Noble's decision seems so refreshing.

He put a bench in front of his Kirkland home.

In a way, that's not unusual in Kirkland. The city has a program to promote benches in public parks, with donors providing a bench and a small plaque usually noting in whose memory the contribution was made.

But Noble's bench isn't in a park. It's on his own property, on a small patio next to the sidewalk, as an open invitation for people to stop and rest.

Considering what he could have put up, the bench seems like an uncommonly friendly gesture.

Noble laughs at that.

"I'm a friendly guy," he smiles.

Noble lives along Waverly Way, just north of downtown Kirkland. His house has become a neighborhood attraction, a place where cars slow down on Sunday afternoons just so people can admire it. The 1920s-style Craftsman-design home actually was put up in 1995 on a 1930s foundation. It won an architectural award and was featured in The Seattle Times Pacific Magazine in March 1996.

Noble, an airline pilot, is a builder in his off hours. A week seldom passes without some addition to his home.

It was about two weeks ago that Noble was skin diving with a friend, Mark Gresham, off Kirkland's Marina Park, when they found the bench. Noble thinks party-goers on a tour boat probably threw it overboard.

They put a line on the bench and pulled it up. Noble took it home, hosed it off, and by the next day walkers were trying it out.

Noble's bench isn't entirely without precedent. The owner of a similar resting place not far away asked that it not be publicized. And perhaps the city's oldest private-public bench is in the 900 block of Third Street, placed there about 12 years ago by Dale and Loita Hawkinson.

They installed it so kids walking up the hill could use it on hot days.

"We had a park bench inside the yard," Loita Hawkinson recalls, "and one day I said, `Let's put this out there.' "

They did, and one thing followed another, with a drinking fountain later added. Then a dog-level water dish was put in. Now, there's even a small sign saying, "Mini park for weary walkers."

People have warned them that the bench would be vandalized or stolen, but nothing's ever happened.

"It's just stayed there," Loita Hawkinson says. "People have left notes for us. It's a very positive thing."