Seattle Now & Then: The Pontius Home

Seattle Now & Then

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: The Cascade neighborhood, named for its public grade school (1894), now long gone, might have been better named for the Pontius family. Immigrants from Ohio, they purchased many of the forested acres north of Denny Way and east of Fairview Avenue.

NOW: The Colwell Building at the northwest corner of Denny Way and Stewart Street opened in 2000. It was named for Rev. David Colwell, the Congregational minister who is credited with starting the Plymouth Housing Group, which and builds affordable housing in Seattle for the homeless and working poor.

This is the farmhouse where Margaret and Rezin Pontius raised their five children: three boys, Frank, Albert and Lincoln, and two girls, Mary and Emma.  The photographer was the prolific Theodore Peiser, whose pioneer studio was one lot south of the southeast corner of Marion Street and Second Avenue, or was until the Great Fire…

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