Promoted as "designed by nature for homes," the new Broadway Park [†] plat was touted for being reliably free of "smoke, fog, cinders, hill-shadows and steep grades." And to keep it a "high-class residential district," construction of each new house was required to "cost $1,530 or more."
The Broadway Park Historic District is located directly to the north of downtown Bellingham in the Cornwall Park Neighborhood. The location of the Broadway Park District is unique within Bellingham, as it was selected to maximize sales revenues by capitalizing on its proximity to a streetcar line and to dispose of a "problem" landscape feature (the marsh) by gifting it to the city as a park. (See Streetcar Suburbs 1888 to 1928)
The Broadway Park Historic District is made up primarily of one to one-and-a-half-story wood frame single family residences built during the first three decades of the 20th century. Construction dates, according to county assessor and newspaper records, range from approximately 1906 to 2008. 224 homes, or approximately 98% of the 230 primary resources in the district were constructed between 1906 and 1931.
The Broadway Park area was platted in 1906. From 1906-1915 about 22% of the residences were built. Only 8% of the houses were constructed between 1916-1920. The majority of houses (60%) were constructed between 1921 and 1931. Some are architect designed, while others may be custom designed or from stock plans. A number of popular residential styles are represented, including Craftsman, Tudor Revival, Colonial Revival, and Four-Square. These styles were typical during this time period. Common forms are bungalow and Four-Square. A few World War II era and contemporary homes (10%) date from 1932 through 2008.
The plat was bounded by Ellis Street on the east. North Street on the south, Illinois Street on the north, and an alley east of Grove Street on the west. Everett C. Lyle, a civil engineer for the BBIC, was responsible for the Broadway Park plat's undulating design, which was a distinct departure from the angular grids found throughout the rest of the city. The parkland (known as Broadway Park), was located towards the southern end of the tract, between North and South Park Drives. Split into two sections by Cornwall Avenue, the park was a shrewd way for Lyle to address the five acres of wetlands, complete with a running stream, located in the midst of the residential development. At the time the undeveloped parkland was a muddy and waterlogged swamp, left bare from the plat's logging off of second growth timber and the grubbing (removing all tree roots) that followed.^ The BBIC donated the "park" to the city, which then had to determine how to deal with the site. For several years the parkland was a bare ground, devoid of any trees or landscape elements. Bellingham's park commissioner, Roland Gamwell, had visions of ornamental flowers and shrubs, but he needed to address the site's erosion issues. The first improvements in the park were simple "rustic" bridges which spanned the soggy ravine in order to allow residents to walk from one side of the park to the other.
Eventually a small pond was developed at the western end of the park. Although some early residents remembered it fondly as a place to swim in the summer and ice skate in the winter, there were complaints that the pond served as a breeding ground for mosquitoes and was a repository for trash. In 1946 the pond was filled in by C. V. Wilder, a general contractor who lived in the neighborhood at 2727 Broadway Street. Other park improvements that followed included the installation in 1911 of two tennis courts in the park's "bowl" east of Cornwell Avenue. By the 1920s the Broadway Park tennis courts were among the most popular in the city, with landscaped paths leading to them through the sunken park.
In 1915 the Bellingham Civic Club started a street beatification campaign centered on Broadway Street's 20-foot wide dirt median than ran from West Holly Street to North Park Drive through the heart of the Broadway Park plat. Everett Lyle created a landscaping plan for the Civic Club, and club members began raising money for its implementation by hosting a variety of dances. The following summer the "Broadway Esplanade" was curbed and planted with a rich variety of seasonal flowing shrubs and plants. Unfortunately, the Esplanade was paved over in 1948, but in 2004 was partially recreated.
By the mid-1920s the park and surrounding streets were one of Bellingham's most beautiful neighborhood districts. In 1928, a fenced off and groomed bowling green lawn was established in the park to the west of Cornwall Avenue. Arthur J. Blythe, owner of Blythe Plumbing & Heating, organized the lawn bowling club that held its meetings at the Blythe home at 2720 Cornwall Avenue. Also contributing to neighborhood pride was the installation of a system of street lamps within the plat, installed as some of 245 lights that were part of a city-wide effort to illuminate the community. The lamps made their debut on February 11, 1928 when Thomas Edison pressed a button in Fort Meyers, Florida to inaugurate Bellingham's new $162,000 street lighting system. It was the inventor's 81®* birthday. More of the street lamps were moved to the neighborhood in the 1950s and '60s.
Early on, the Broadway Park plat was particularly attractive to potential homebuilders due to its proximity to a newly planned extension and stop for the Whatcom County Rail & Light streetcar line. The line terminated at the intersection of Cornwall Avenue and East North Street. The streetcar stop provided ease of transportation to new homeowners and by the fall of 1906, the first houses began sprouting up on lots near the trolley line. Among the first was a two-story late-Victorian design at 115 East North Street, built for shingle manufacturer Cicero Coffman and his wife Dixie.
The BBIC advertised the Broadway Park plat development extensively through advertisements and articles in The Bellingham Herald. The company carefully crafted their marketing campaign to focus on points that would strongly resonate with perspective buyers. One of their first advertisements was on August 4, 1906. The company took out an entire page advertisement in the Bellingham Herald. The upper two-thirds of the page displayed a map showing the various parcels for sale. ^ The advertisement listed the standard booster press typical of the era, explaining how the city would soon be larger than Seattle, and the advantages of investing in real estate. The neighborhood improvements (graded streets, cement sidewalks, sewers) were listed as significant values that made the neighborhood the "only fully improved district in Bellingham".
On March 16, 1907 the BBIC again ran a huge full page advertisement in the local newspaper. This time, instead of a plat map, an artist's perspective drawing of the neighborhood emphasized the plat's proximity to the Washington School, the Columbia School, the peacefulness of forest and fields to the east and the views of the mountains, sound, and a port to the west."* Arthur Watts, the BBIC realtor working in the company's on-site office, sold all 30 lots of the initial offering by year's end. In 1907 Watts had a house built for his family at 2530 Dock Street (currently Cornwall Avenue) just south of the Broadway Park plat, and while selling lots in the area pointed to his own home as proof of his faith in the neighborhood's future. Captain Fred Llewellyn had the first house built on South Park Drive, but moved to Aberdeen, Washington before he could move in. Finished in time for the 1907 holiday season, the captain's house at 2730 South Park Drive was advertised by the BBIC as the ideal gift, "A Bungalow for Christmas!"
Unlike contemporary tract housing developments that typically have lots occupied by nearly identical houses constructed within a short time frame, Broadway Park took several years to build out, giving it a variety of distinctive homes. Many lots were held as investments and changed hands two or three times over the years before a house was built. To encourage interest in the upper area of the plat, in 1908 the BBIC built a model two-story Classical Revival style house at 2729 Sunset Drive — the first dwelling on the street.
When compared to other developments in Bellingham of the same era, the design of the Broadway Park district stands out in large part because of its setting and its undulating road layout that is anchored by two irregularly shaped parcels of parkland.® Adjacent neighborhoods with substantial development during the same time period, such as Sunnyland, Lettered Streets, Columbia, and Cornwall Park neighborhoods predominately utilized the gridiron plan, the prevailing system for platting streets during the early twentieth century.
The location, the subdivision's layout, and that house/yard design all contribute to the character of the Broadway Park district. The plat, land owned by the BBIC, appears to have been selected for residential use for a number of reasons: its proximity to the commercial center of Bellingham, which kept development and infrastructure costs relatively low; the extension of the Whatcom County Rail & Light-owned streetcar line, that would provide transportation to and from the neighborhood to the downtown core; and the problematic marshy area that occupied the lower portion of the plat. Unsuitable for building and expensive to fill, this "wart" was transformed into a "beauty mark" by the gifting of the property to the city. The BBIC thereby released itself from any financial obligations related to the property and reaped the added benefit of selling extensive tracks of residential land fronting a city "park". The subdivision layout was observably linked to restricting factors in the topography. An undulating park plan, askew to the cardinal points, inspired the designer to create serpentine streets, which created amebic-shaped blocks and ultimately, irregularly-shaped building lots.
The unusual lot shapes and sizes offered a variety of possibilities for house plans and sizes. The "home grounds" — the spatial arrangement of home, garage, landscaping, and garages — in the Broadway Park district are typically represented by a single residence, located near the middle or front half of a lot, often with a garage in the rear accessed by the alley. The majority of houses (68%) have detached garages, which are period in their construction. Within the Broadway Park district access to the front of the residence was provided by a public sidewalk that connected to private sidewalk. Very few residences have driveways or garages fronting the street. The regularity of houses site on the lot provides a distinct rhythm and scale to the streetscape, and front porches and relatively large expanses of windows directly relate to the public street.
In general, the development patterns of the Broadway Park district followed a set trend. The first round of residential construction, from 1906 through 1915, occurred either in the lower southeast corner of the plat (around Hampton Place) or predominately focused on large corner lots, most of which were located on Cornwall Avenue. The most notable exception to this is the Roeder House, which occupies seven lots at the intersection of Broadway Street and Sunset Drive. This first period of development represents 22% of the building stock in the plat. From 1916 through 1920 development was fairly light, with only 8% of the lots being built upon. This development shows no discernable pattern. The district had a substantial number of new residences constructed between 1921 and 1931, more than 60%. The remaining 10% of the lots were developed post-1931. It is likely that a number of these lots were purchased for investment purposes, thus sitting vacant for a number of years.
By the turn of the twentieth century many professionally planned suburban neighborhoods were being influenced by the City Beautiful and City Planning movements, which emphasized a more formal axial and radial symmetry with radial curves, in contrast to the standard gridiron pattern.'® This was a progression from the geometric and formal Beaux Arts planning that was popular in the academies. The Broadway Park district differs from this model, and is far more organic with odd amebic-shaped blocks and awkward street intersections (such as the intersection of Lyle Street, Brier Lane, South Park Drive and Crescent Lane). It is not known how much of the design is attributed to Lyle's personal sensibilities, as opposed to pure response to the topography of the site. Given that Lyle was an employee of the BBIC, it is likely that site conditions and potential financial gain dictated the plan components considerably more than personal aesthetics.
In terms of its date, the planning and initial development of the Broadway Park district fits within the "Streetcar Suburb" category, as defined by the National Park Service. However, it does not showcase the Beaux Arts radial and axial plans more typical of this era. Instead, the subdivision is more of a hybrid, formed around the paramount importance of the streetcar, yet follows many trends that developed during the "Early Automobile Suburb" period. A hierarchy of roads with varying widths and purposes, blocks longer than those found in earlier platted areas of the city (thus fewer cross streets), common parkland with footpaths separated from automobile traffic, sidewalks, and garages advertised with homes constructed during the 1920s are all features of the "Early Automobile Suburb" (and indeed, the greatest percentage of residences in the Broadway Park plat were constructed during that time period
The Broadway Park Historic District is significant as a streetcar suburb with ties to the Bellingham Bay Improvement Company. The neighborhood retains good integrity in terms of its original plan and plat development. The residences are a mix of early twentieth century styles, with a substantial number of bungalow forms and Craftsman styled structures. The Broadway Park district has within its bounds several grand, "high-style" houses, and the remaining majority of residences provide a cohesive setting and feeling for the neighborhood. Combined, the houses and unique plat with undulating roads and centralized park showcase early twentieth century development trends in Bellingham's history.
† Adapted from: Caroline T. Swope, M.S.H.P., Ph.D., Kingstree Studios, Broadway Park Historic District, nomination document, 2011, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
