Harlan Thomas (1870-1953), Architectural Practitioner, Professor, Traveler, Engineer, Carpenter, and Artist

 
 

For four decades Harlan Thomas’s work, often in collaboration with other architects and firms, formed and transformed Seattle’s built environment. His travels in Europe and study in Paris, at an independent atelier associated with the Ecole des Beaux Arts, had provided him with a repertoire of European architectural idioms that he could successfully adapt and elaborate for the twentieth-century American context. Major projects included the Chelsea Hotel (1907), Sorrento Hotel (1909), the Pike Place Market Corner Building (1912), Rhodes Department Store (1926), the first Harborview Hospital Building (1931), as well as the Carnegie-funded Queen Anne (1914) and Columbia City (1915) branches of the Seattle Public Library, Bagley Hall at the University of Washington (1937), and numerous college buildings and schools across the nation, from Juneau to New Haven – in exterior styles ranging from Renaissance Italianate, Tudor Revival, and Georgian to Collegiate Gothic and Art Deco. For the interiors Thomas found eclectic inspiration in his 1903-04 world travels (to India, Ceylon, and Australia), prioritizing human-scaled comfort, salubrious ventilation, and inspiring outlooks over adherence to a stock style.

 Harlan Thomas played a dynamic part in the architectural development of Queen Anne Hill. In 1906, in conjunction with the contractor N.W. Hindle and the attorney George Wright, the entrepreneurial Thomas formed two companies – the Realty Improvement Company and the Queen Anne Company – for the express purpose of building and marketing single-family homes and apartment buildings in Queen Anne. For projects like the 1907 Rosita Villa Apartments (still extant as Lomita Vista) at 1208 10th Avenue West and a 1914 spec house at 314 W. Halladay St., Thomas was his own client, able to exercise complete creative freedom. Thomas also designed substantial houses or additions in Queen Anne for prominent Seattle figures Roy J. Kinnear (325 W. Prospect St), Frank Bayley (1235 8th Avenue West), Daniel B. Trefthen (1211 8th Avenue West), David E. Fryer (1223 8th Avenue West), and T.T. Barton (717 W. Blaine St).

Harlan Thomas Landmarks On queen anne hill

Harlan Thomas Residence - 1908-1909

Chelsea Hotel (1906-1907)

Rosita Villa Apartments (1907)

Roy J. Kinnear Residence (1908)

Thomas Cottage (1908-1909)

Frank S. Bayley Residence (1901-1910)

Daniel B Trefethen Residence (1911-1912)



Queen Anne Branch of the Seattle Public Library (1912-1914)

David E Fryer Residence (1912-1913)

Spec House (1915)

Amalfi Apartments (1915)

F . T. Bartoon Residence (1921)

7th Church of Christ Scientist (1926-1927)