Home tour focuses on Snohomish pioneer's legacy

The name John S. White probably doesn't ring familiar to most Snohomish residents, even though his work stretches from First Street to Avenue H.

White worked as a designer and builder in the 1880s and 1890s, and his homes and business buildings form the spine of downtown Snohomish today.

White's legacy was all but lost until a local history buff unearthed him from century-old newspaper clippings and made him the star of the historical society's annual home tour on Sunday.

The history buff is Warner Blake, a well-known figure around town who lives in the old St. Michael's Catholic Church in downtown Snohomish with his partner, Karen Guzak.

Six homes and six commercial buildings will be open for viewing on the tour. Information about eight additional historic sites will be in the guidebook, which is given out with each ticket. Some highlights of the tour include White's original Snohomish home (1888), the First Methodist Church (1885), the Burns Block (1890) and the A.M. Blackman Grocery Store (1889), now the Oxford Tavern. The historical society offers a free map at its Web site, earlysnohomish.com/tour, of buildings on the tour.

Some of White's work is long gone, victims of fire or time. The tour passes by several of these ghost sites, including the spot where the mansion of founding father E.C. Ferguson once stood.

Unlike past tours, this one is designed to be walkable, as all the sites are near the downtown core.

Nobody is sure exactly how many homes White built because no building permits have survived from that era, Blake said. He pieced together a list of a few dozen homes by searching through early newspapers. White likely had a hand in many more Snohomish buildings, including some of the finer homes of the city's elite.

White never hung a shingle as an architect even though he usually designed the homes he built. In White's day, design was generally part of the building trade rather than a separate profession, said Joshua Scott, principal architect at Mosaic Architecture in Snohomish.

White's work, while not particularly ground-breaking stylistically, displays excellent craftsmanship and pleasing proportions, Scott said. Most of White's architecture is best described as late Victorian, a clearer, more straightforward style than the gingerbread details found on Queen Anne Victorian homes.

"The historical society is delving deeper into the work of a Snohomish resident," Scott said. "That gets to the heart of history."

Historian David Dilgard has long respected White's work.

"The sense of proportion is what he does so well," Dilgard said. "It's a beautiful balance of all the elements.

"He has an amazing eye for what's going to make your eye happy."

Much of White's work was built from 1888 to 1890, a boom time before the expected arrival of the railroad. Land prices shot up and the town grew like a teenage boy. White, the eminent builder of the time, likely had more work than he could handle.

White, with his long mustache and even longer face, looked like a New England journeyman carpenter, Dilgard said.

"He was the sort of guy you'd expect to see in the back shop, covered with sawdust, manufacturing soffits for a building."

The one job White didn't land: the courthouse. Leaders hired a better known name from Portland, Ore. -- a mistake, Dilgard believes. He points to the design quality of White's other commercial buildings, including the Burns Block, what Dilgard described as his "magnum opus."

Blake found a biography with an engraving of White from the now-defunct Snohomish Sun published January 1891. White, a native of Topeka, Kan., traveled with his wife, Delia, and daughters to Snohomish about 1883. He immediately won a bid to design and build a new Odd Fellows Hall, and he built the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was later moved to Third Street and Avenue B. He served several terms on the city council.

White died in 1920 at age 75 at his home on Avenue H. The tour includes a stop at White's home, a modest 1,300-square-foot two-story. Bethany and Robert Hensley purchased this home two years ago, drawn to its character and solid craftsmanship.

White would probably recognize little about the home he built before Washington became a state. Through the years, its various owners have added and updated. The facade, with its solid Victorian face, remains largely unchanged. The couple recently had it painted olive green.

Inside the home's walls, they've found tatters of century-old newspapers and a hand broom.

"We like the historical feel, but we wanted it livable for today's lifestyle," she said.

The Hensleys preserved what they could and redid what they couldn't. They had the home completely rewired, adding reproduction push-button light switches. They replaced the original flooring with new teak. Robert Hensley spent the better part of six weeks painstakingly removing layer upon layer of wallpaper and paint in the kitchen to reveal the original handsome wood planks underneath.



Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com