The Day Gig Harbor's Richest Resident Left Town
By
Greg Spadoni
Content Copyright © 2021 by Greg Spadoni
Just as history is often lost when people
die, it suffers a similar fate when buildings are gone. To anyone living today,
the history of the northeast half of Lot 1, Block 2, of the Millville neighborhood
in Gig Harbor, Washington, begins with the Stanich family. After all, it was vacant when Martin Stanich
bought it (and an equal portion of Lot 2) in 1917 for one thousand dollars. But
the reason the land was bare is because the original house on the property
was no longer there. Rather
than beginning with the Stanich family, the property has a history of
settlement long before their ownership. It’s one of the richest histories in
all of Gig Harbor, tied directly to the town’s first development boom, going all
the way back to the 1880s. This Content Stolen from Greg Spadoni at groupssa.com/ssa/hallhouse.html _______________ . .
In spite of his name’s scarcity in written
histories of Gig Harbor, Francis (Frank) Hall was the town’s true visionary, a
mover and shaker whose promotion of and efforts to develop the sheltered little
bay’s potential directly led to the creation of the platted settlements along
the bay’s shore. The Gig Harbor Lumber
Company, of which he was the president and one of the principal shareholders,
constructed a shingle mill at the north end, leading Dr. Alfred Burnham to
establish the town of Gig Harbor to capitalize on the influx of people to work in
the mill. At the same time, the company
built a much larger lumber mill on the west side, causing John Novak and Joe
Dorotich to found the town of Millville to similarly take advantage of that
business. .
When
the two mills were operational, Hall turned his attention to building a house
in Millville. On a visit from their soon-to-be former home town of Albert Lea,
Minnesota, his wife Margaret helped him select the location. They decided on a waterfront lot and paid
George Savage $400 for it in November, 1888.
Margaret temporarily returned to Minnesota while the new home was under
construction. Built on the water end, it
shared the lot with Hall’s general store at the street
end, which today is the site of Millville Pizza. The property was landscaped with flowers and a
variety of the most popular fruit trees of the day. .
There
is no doubt that the lumber used to build the house was milled by the Gig Harbor Lumber Co., just
a few hundred feet to the east. The sawmill
was cutting lumber for sale by the end of 1888, and the idea of the company
president buying lumber for his personal residence from a competing mill in
Tacoma is preposterous. .
As befitting a man who was engaged in a
wide variety of mostly profitable businesses his entire adult life, Frank’s
house reflected his financial success. It was, quite simply, the largest, finest, and most expensive house on
the harbor. With
12 rooms totalling 4,200 square feet, it was
massive by the standards of the day. Twice the size of the little Villa Hotel on the next block, it stood as
the showpiece of the town until shortly after Frank’s death in 1903. As a new widow, living alone, Mrs. Hall
decided in early 1904 that she preferred to be near her daughter in
Tacoma. Claiming she could not sell the
house for anywhere near what she believed it to be worth—the staggering sum of
$6,000, not including the land—she took it with her when she relocated. This Content Stolen from Greg Spadoni at groupssa.com/ssa/hallhouse.html
Moving a two-story house 30 feet wide and
70 feet long was not necessarily difficult in 1904, but the act of placing a relatively
fragile wood-framed structure onto a floating barge always carried a certain
amount of risk. Mrs. Hall minimized the risk
by hiring a Tacoma firm with an unblemished record of moving large buildings
under difficult circumstances. Nichols
& Handley had made more difficult moves and did not anticipate any problems
with the Hall house. The foreman in
charge had been with the company for thirteen years, so was well versed in the
tricky business of loading buildings onto and off of barges. So confident were the workmen in their
ability to smoothly move the home, they left all the furnishings inside,
unconcerned that they could possibly slide out of position and be damaged during the
building’s transport. .
The
moving of Mrs. Hall’s house, described by a Tacoma newspaper as “the largest
and most pretentious dwelling at Gig Harbor,” began days before the barges
arrived in the harbor. The building first
had to be moved to the water’s edge, where it waited for a favorable tide for
loading. On Friday, March 4, during an incoming tide after dark, with the
barges (scows) anchored in place, the most delicate part of the move was put
into motion. It would prove to be the end of Nichols & Handley’s
unblemished record. As the house was being rolled onto heavy Douglas fir
timbers reaching from the barges to the land, the scows, having been improperly
secured, were pushed several feet out from the shore, upsetting the carefully
calculated balance between fragile building and floating platform. Not
being able to see exactly what was happening in the dim and shadowy light of
kerosene lanterns, the movers were
unable to stop the accidental imbalance, resulting in too much weight being
borne by the shore ends of the barges, pushing them deep enough to take on
water, while at the same time causing the far ends to rise frightfully high, throwing
timbers, cribbing, and tools overboard. Several workmen rode out the wild rise,
though one opted to abandon ship and leap into the water. The precipitous
tipping of the barges threw the house into sharp, jolting motions that caused
the rear portion of the building, consisting of a woodshed and lattice apartment
above it, to break off and drop into the bay. The rest of the structure was
severely strained and the roof badly damaged. What began as a routine move
instantly shifted into a frantic effort to prevent the remainder of the house from
being totally destroyed. The most they could do that night was stabilize the
house and barges and wait for the next morning’s daylight. Work resumed at dawn
when the bay water that had poured into the scows was siphoned out, saving them
from sinking, and the building was leveled, allowing the loading to be
completed. The Tacoma newspapers reported the house to be a total loss, but
they went to press too soon. The building was, in fact, saved. .
After
the embarrassing incident of the previous evening, although most of the house’s
contents were not damaged, either the crew’s or Mrs. Hall’s confidence
certainly was, resulting in the furniture being removed and shipped to the city
on an afternoon sailing of the passenger steamer Crest. Two tug boats then towed the now empty house to Tacoma, landing
at the foot of Carr Street on the city’s north end. This Content Stolen from Greg Spadoni at groupssa.com/ssa/hallhouse.html
From the beach at north Tacoma, Mrs.
Hall’s damaged (though presumably still pretentious) house was pulled due south
up the steep grade of Carr Street three-quarters of a mile to an elevation of
about 300 feet. There it was repaired, placed
upon a foundation made of stone, and both gas and electric services were connected.
At some point after having been moved, the attic was converted into living
space, bringing the total to around 4,800 square feet. .
Within a few years Mrs. Hall’s daughter,
son-in-law, granddaughter and grandson-in-law were all living with her. She even took in boarders from time to time. Her daughter died in December, 1913, and her
son-in-law three months later, leaving her granddaughter to inherit the
house when Mrs. Hall died in 1926. The
granddaughter passed away in 1934, leaving the house to her husband and
eleven-year-old son. By that time Mrs.
Hall’s fortune was apparently exhausted, for her grandson-in-law was unable to
afford to continue owning the house, and moved to Yakima in 1937. After 49 years and two locations, the Hall
family ownership of Gig Harbor’s finest house was over. This Content Stolen from Greg Spadoni at groupssa.com/ssa/hallhouse.html
So far, no photograph of the Hall house on
its Millville lot in Gig Harbor has been found. There’s always hope one could
turn up someday. It would certainly be easy to spot, dwarfing all the
neighboring buildings, including the nearby hotel. But the opportunity to view
the house itself is not entirely lost. While it can no longer be seen in Gig
Harbor, it remains to this day on the corner lot in Tacoma where it was parked
in March, 1904. .
. It has been written many times that the Joseph
Dorotich house, across the side street from where the Hall house used to sit in
Millville, is the oldest building in Gig Harbor, having been constructed about
1884. If that’s true—and no solid evidence appears to exist to confirm it—then
the Hall house, built in 1888, is probably the second oldest Gig Harbor
building, even though it’s in its second hundred years residing in Tacoma. And if the Dorotich house was indeed built four
years before Frank Hall brought lumber milling to Gig Harbor, then the Hall
house represents the only known surviving lumber from the Gig Harbor Lumber
Company’s mill.
.
This Content Stolen from Greg Spadoni at groupssa.com/ssa/hallhouse.html _______________ . g
Martin Stanich eventually owned all of Lots 1 and 2, Block 2, in
Millville. He bought the beach in 1916 (NOT the tidelands, just the beach –
long story!), the northeast ends in 1917, and the southwest ends (on Harborview
Drive) in 1919.
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Content Copyright © 2021 by Greg Spadoni Other stories of local history by Greg Spadoni: dozens. Here's one: The Gig Harbor Lumber Co.
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