<Clearly visible from a main street north
of the Arboretum, have you ever
seen it?
I in addition to the fun keeping up on the latest architectural/shelter/design books and magazines and the fun of driving around taking pictures, I do hope to occasionally make a living doing this by assisting in the process of buying and selling some of these properties, given that, besides my over four years working full time for AIA registered architects, I am also a licensed associate real estate broker with over 10 years experience in the Seattle area, and I have extensive experience in property management, landlording, hands on experience in building, rehabing/remodeling dozens of properties, and experience in construction management (a Bachelor of Science degree in it), and, I have been told, an easygoing gentle offbeat dry sense of wit....Now on with the show:
Welcome to the white-on-white zen-space:
<Here are the current corporate world headquarters of Western Associates
Real Estate Company. Once again, you've probably driven by it on
Greenwood Avenue and, need I say it: YOU
NEVER noticed its fabulous fifties lines and architecture! I won't
blame or shame you, it takes time to develop an "eye" for
these future classics. The design of this space is one of the reasons
I choose this office. Of our 30-some agents, in the not too distant
past, I was the top money earner and top producer for the entire year
for our entire office, although I tend to concentrate on single and
multi-family real estate rather than a lot of high end commercial
real estate as most of our agents do.
Here is a home that is not listed yet, located in south Leschi area, contact me for more details :
<This
beautiful stonework and soaringly optimistic roofline at Westlake
and Denny?, have you ever noticed them?
Some like these may not survive...
<these 3 images of a Seward Park three story ultramodern house with great Lake
Washington, 2 kitchens, priced under $250K (sold).
<a cool apt. building in Queen Anne, very
"Frank Lloyd Wright" style, with a for rent sign in the window...
This next one got me started on my "modern" in Seattle kick, over 6,000sq. ft., I was the selling and buyer's agent, it is already sold:
Of the photos you see on these pages, some are purely inspirational in design, and others are or were recently on the market for sale. Once again I reiterate, they are ALL located within the Seattle area and photographed recently.
This trailer was photographed by me in May, 1999 in the University District. It shows that affordable stylish 50's/60's retro-chic housing CAN be found in the close-in Seattle area. I look forward to the challenge of finding YOUR dreamy abode...
I pride myself in that all photos I have taken for this website of the exteriors of properties are located in the greater Seattle area. We live in an area with a rich tradition of retro"modern" architecture. So much of Seattle was built in the post-WWII to mid-sixties "jet age". The output back then was amazing. All around us, there is so much of it, yet we often tune it out and don't even see it. Our eyes have tuned it out as out of date, quaint, tired, silly, perhaps a little Dick's hamburger stand/Spud's fish and chips, or Retro martini-lounge "tacky-kitschy". I believe this misses the point. I'm not talking here about some dusty old historical "nostalgia" thing, but rather about the optimism that is modernism, "a belief that the future will be better than the past".
The Seattle's World's Fair/Space Needle/rocket ships/astronauts/jet planes era was an embryonic time of surprisingly advanced progressive beliefs and transitions, and deserve not to be written off but given a second very hard look. Just because the society at that time was still socially repressed, quaint, or uptight, doesn't mean that the architecture was. The two, although often associated, are, I believe, two opposites that just happen to be sharing the same space and time. The dying out of the old, overlapping with the birth of the new, the awkward convergence of the two.
These below recent local for sale LISTINGS give you a feel for what I look for:
<You
probably drive right by this all the time on busy Roy Street near
Queen Anne Avenue, but have you ever actually SEEN it?
<Or
this one, sold recently (2002), on a busy heavily driven arterial street in
Capitol Hill, directly up the
hill from the last one: (do you even
notice it?):
<Do
you see this Ford dealer on busy First Avenue?
Remember to bookmark this site! and tell your friends about my site, also email me with any comments or suggestions on how to improve it! Thanks!,
Tom Holst, Associate Broker,
phone: (206) 841-0003,
Western Associates Real Estate, 9020 Greenwood Ave N. Seattle WA 98103 USA. Webmaster: Tom Holst, copyright 1999, 2000 by Tom Holst, all rights reserved. Some properties here may be pending sale, sold, expired, or otherwise off-market, if a picture of your property is here and you would prefer it not be shown on this website, please contact me and I will remove it Tom Holst assume no responsibilities for errors or omissions, whether occasioned by them or others. Listings subject to price change, correction, errors, omission, prior sale, or withdrawal. immediately. All data herein including that from the NorthWest Multiple Listing Service is furnished without verification and MLS and