Destroyed landmark was in `the heart of Ballard'

Ballard's historic district harks back to the former mill town's colorful past, and the landmark building that burned last night was at the center of it.

"This is the heart of Ballard, right here," said Jim Webb, who saw the flames last night from his Phinney Ridge home. Webb runs his accounting and consulting business out of an office on the building's second floor.

"There are a lot of memories here," he said.

Before last night's fire, Nicole Vandermeulen had left her home, just north of the building, to walk her dog. She saw smoke and immediately thought of her business, Chameleon Design, three doors down and across the street.

"These are all historically protected buildings. Many of them are a century old," Vandermeulen said, her hands pressed to her chest, as she watched the flames. "This is just disastrous, just disastrous."

The three-story brick building - once the Sunset Hotel - was constructed six years before Ballard, then a community of Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish immigrants, voted 996-874 to annex to Seattle.

When Ballard lost its independence in 1907, some mournful residents draped their city hall in black crepe. That municipal building was near the Sunset Hotel until it was wrecked by the earthquake of 1965 and razed that year.

In 1989, when the old city bell was refitted in the tower across the street from the Sunset Hotel, the four Jones brothers sang at the dedication. Their meat market, damaged in last night's fire, was started in 1945 by their father and is now run by Jim Jones, the third generation of Joneses.

Back in its early years, Ballard had been dubbed "Shingle Town USA," and after Seattle's Great Fire in 1889 it was Ballard sawmills that rebuilt the city. It was a fishing town and a factory town, but also a neighborhood.

Local historians swear that around the turn of the century, for every liquor license issued a church had to be built.

Ballard Avenue was designated a historic district in 1973 and in recent years has undergone something of a renaissance, with new businesses opening that drew a young, hip crowd. It's a place where artists mingle with fishermen and seniors.

Still, Terry Burkhardt who has run Burk's Cafe across Ballard Avenue Northwest for 18 years, said, "It hasn't changed much, the whole time I have been here."

Last night, at Valdi's Ballard Bistro, the band played on, even as the fire burned across the street. Patrons continued to dine by candlelight and enjoy live music. From the windows one could see the flashing lights and smoke.

Dave Enslow, who came from Edmonds to play his Autoharp, paid little attention to the sirens. "It's kind of terrible, the fire," said Bob Morgan, helping with the sound equipment, "but there's nothing you can can do."