Bothell's past has a future

BOTHELL

Motorists slow to a crawl to gawk at the white house with green trim that sits on a hill overlooking West Riverside Drive.

There's an L-shaped porch with wooden posts along the front and a wide dormer jutting out from the attic.

There's no sign in front of the Bothell home Robert and Leslie Hayton bought a little more than two years ago, but it's apparent to passers-by that it hasn't changed much since James Sorenson, a master craftsman, built it for his wife, Marie, in 1922.

The home, listed on both the national and state registers of historic places, is on a growing list of Bothell landmarks that is putting the city ahead of the curve when it comes to Eastside historic preservation.

At a time when Redmond, Kirkland and other cities are in heated battles with property owners over potential restrictions that come with historical designations, Bothell residents already have an inventory of reminders of their not-so-distant past.

"We feel we're caretakers in addition to homeowners," said Robert Hayton, standing in his dining room with its original inlaid mahogany floors, built-in cabinets with leaded-glass doors and a picture window that looks out to a garden.

In the house's 78-year history, only four families, including the Sorensons, have lived there.

James Sorenson built a number of houses in Bothell and apparently used his own arts-and-crafts-style home as an example of his work.

The Sorenson house and its 2 acres were valued at $840 in 1925, according to county tax rolls. Then, West Riverside Drive was an unnamed gravel route known to county officials only as Road No. 625.

By 1937, the first year county assessors began filling out property-record cards to describe features of individual structures, the Sorensons' neighborhood, one of Bothell's oldest, was considered middle class.

While the Sorenson home was hooked up to the city water main, its indoor plumbing was crude, with waste dumping into a cesspool at the back of the property. A brick fireplace, a large attic and a full basement along with a separate two-car garage without doors were all noted on the property records.

The Sorenson home and a little more than half an acre were sold in 1957 for $12,000 before changing hands again in 1963 for $18,500. The Haytons purchased the home in 1998 for $300,000.

Although the kitchen and bathroom have been modernized, the floors sanded down and stained, and the interior repainted and re-wallpapered over the years, all the work that's been done has preserved the house's original flavor, Hayton said.

"I think you need to consider the home as a living being that's had a life prior to the homeowner becoming associated with it," Hayton said. "That life the home has had is an important part of the community's history."

That sentiment, shared by many in the community, is the reason Bothell has been able to save so many buildings. Years before suburban development began to drastically change the Eastside, Bothell already had an active historical society, a community museum and a city ordinance that enabled officials to nominate buildings to national, state and local registers.

In 1992, the historical society commissioned a historian to compile an inventory of all city buildings more than 50 years old. There are roughly 500 properties on the list, "but that doesn't mean they're all historically important," said Sue Kienast, president of the Bothell museum and historical society.

Historical designations have always been done with property owners' permission, Kienast said.

The city has a list of 17 historic sites, and at least one more home could be added, but so far the owner has not agreed, she said.

Kienast sees Bothell as a model for cities beginning to draft ordinances and regulations to protect what few old structures remain.

"We've been lucky," she said, "because preservation was an issue for us long before the really heavy development of the area began in the 1980s."

Kienast and others on the city landmarks board have worked with city planners to persuade developers to incorporate at least three old buildings - two of which are listed on the national and state registers - into new projects instead of tearing them down.

Kienast believes that as parts of the Eastside struggle to find an identity, Bothell's identity is "a direct result of what's gone before us, and these buildings are a visible reminder of that."

Sara Jean Green's e-mail address is sgreen@seattletimes.com.