One Last Mattson House Posting

It used to be that nobody cared much about what happened to the houses and buildings in Tacoma.  Great mansions liked the Buffelen House  on Yakima were razed for the sake of progress and money.  Much of downtown Tacoma disappeared to help cure blight and crime.  Now, things are different.  People are noticing and caring.

When this story first broke I received several questions about why the home wasn’t protected.  Of course I don’t know specifically, but I can speculate.  Firstly, the house isn’t in one of the larger historic districts or communities.  It’s on the edge of the cliff in an area where the houses are significantly more expensive on one side of the street than the other.  It’s around a corner that most of us zip past while staring toward Vashon Island on our way to Point Defiance.  My sense is that this neighborhood doesn’t have quite the same sense of a shared history or community as in other neighborhoods.  The Stadium District and its adjacent North Slope are neighborhoods with a much stronger sense of shared community. Subsequently, many homes, both large and small, are on the various historic registers.  Secondly, teardowns haven’t been a signficant problem in Tacoma for a long time.  If folks had a concern about this house being torn down, the historic organizations probably would’ve jumped into action.  However, with no notice it will instead become the poster child for non-action. 

Peter Callaghan asks today Who Owns The Right To Trash History?

If you own something significant, something beautiful, something unique, do you have a right to destroy it? I don’t mean a legal right, I mean a moral right. Few would agree that the owner of a work of art – a painting or a sculpture – has a moral right to destroy it. So why is architecture given less standing?

Tacoma doesn’t have to sit back and let market forces and property ownership dictate its direction on this issue leaving the rest of us sentimental and sad.  Preservations in Woodside, California have, at least to this point, prevented Apple’s Steve Jobs from demolishing his 17,000 square foot mansion he let fall into complete disrepair.  Historical societies and preservationists can win. 

As an aside:  Mr. Russell has argued through his spokesperson that the house needed to come down due to lead paint, asbestos, lead pipes, a fear of earthquakes, and a few other reasons.  If we all used this same criteria then nearly no house in Tacoma is safe.  Plus, if one fears earthquake safety, one shouldn’t buy on the top of a cliff.  Then there’s the issue of the bulldozers.  In this day and age, home recycling is a pretty big business.  Seattle has at least a half dozen companies that will dismantle your house and reuse that which can be reused.  From what we hear, nothing was saved – not the greenhouse from Thornewood, the gardens, the hardwood floors, the windows, the beams in the ceilings… nothing.  Nobody in the greater community will benefit from this loss.  That’s unfortunate.

What we need to do now is think toward the future.  What can we do?  What things do we value and what should we protect?  At this point there’s plenty of land (view lots included) all over the city for new projects.  Can we get organized and protect the architecture of our past?  Tacoma has a history and I don’t want to see it wiped clean for the sake of progress.  Where’s our next Mattson house?

Satellite Image of the Mattson House and Property