Tag: Port Townsend

Port Townsend – Northwest Maritime Center

Continuing yesterday’s maritime theme, another Port Townsend go-to for any boater is the Northwest Maritime Center. The two building complex houses a boathouse, classrooms, library, a conference facility, and a pilothouse set up for learning navigation, communications, and vessel control. The Center opens onto a large plaza overlooking Port Townsend Bay and often displays beautiful wooden boats.

The Chandlery at the Maritime Center was our destination on this trip. Brass nails, to be exact. But we’ve found Stockholm tar and marine paint there and drooled over tools and fixtures. The shop fields calls from all over the U.S. and the manager included a call from the Carribbean in her list of calls the day we visited.

There is an excellent selection of books, a small cafe, boating togs, and a well-chosen array of gifts and art. Even if you’re not seaward bound, it’s an interesting place to browse.

On a sunnier day and a future trip I’ll snap some photos of the Center’s outdoor plaza and boats. It’s an attractive and impressive facility.

Port Townsend is for boaters

If you’re married to a mariner, as I am, you learn that places like this are catnip to a boater. I’ve learned to enjoy and appreciate the lines of a classic boat, and to keep myself occupied while my husband haunts marine supply depots. I took this rainy day view during a shopping trip for boat paint. Port Townsend is a center for boats and boating and there’s a boatyard that’s a hubub of haulout activity.

The Voyager, above, is hauled out for repairs. It is a purse seiner fishing boat, which means that it sets a net in a large circle on the top of the water. A rope around the net at its bottom is tightened to draw in the catch. The big block at the back of the boat pulls up the net.

In addition to working boats like the Voyager, Port Townsend is home to yachts, sailboats, and a population of people who live aboard various seagoing vessels. In the 1970s Port Townsend became the center for a West Coast renaissance of classic wooden boats and has hosted an annual Wooden Boat Festival since 1976.

Tomorrow I’ll take you on a visit to the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend.

Port Townsend's Victorians

The Victorian architecture of Port Townsend is real eye candy. Many of the buildings were completed in the late 1890s and the two I’ll show you today were both the work of architect Elmer H. Fisher. Fisher was a Scotsman who designed a number of Port Townsend buildings starting around 1887 and simultaneously opened an office in Seattle, where he designed more than 50 buildings immediately after Seattle’s great fire of 1889.

The Hastings Building, above, was built at a cost of $35,000 to $45,000 and completed in 1890. It has a 38-foot inner courtyard topped with a glass skylight and has housed businesses from dry goods to a reputed bordello. Today the ground floor houses retail businesses and the upper floors are not occupied. Descendents of the original family still own the building and are working on an ambitious restoration of the structure.

Here is another Elmer H. Fisher design, the N.D. Hill Building. This $25,000 building has been maintained and kept in near original condition. Like the Hastings Building above, it has a skylighted interior courtyard. In the late 1920s this building was the DeVillo Hotel and rooms ran from 75 cents to $1.25 a night. The upper floors today are the location of the Water Street Hotel. Rooms run a bit more, but they’re pretty reasonable by today’s standards.

Both of the buildings I’ve shown today back up to Port Townsend Bay and share Water Street with buildings of the same vintage Victorian architecture. There is an interesting mix of small shops, galleries, boutiques, and restaurants. There are historic “ghost signs” on the brick walls of many buildings, some of which I posted here on Monday.

In the 1960s Port Townsend expanded its small boat building industry. Tomorrow I’ll visit PT’s saltier side.

Port Townsend – City of Dreams

If you want a day trip from Sequim that offers a look at Victorian Washington, some retail grazing, a maritime fix, or just a meal somewhere else, Port Townsend is a great option.

European settlement in Port Townsend, or “PT,” began in early 1851. PT’s downtown heart is Water Street alongside Port Townsend Bay, which is in view from much of downtown. PT was a well-situated seaport in the latter half of the 1800s, with an economy based on marine trade to the growing Puget Sound region. It rivaled San Francisco in its prospects as a growth center and early speculation was that it would be the largest harbor on the West Coast. A railroad network was expected to fuel further economic growth. By the late 1800s the city had many beautiful homes and buildings in the era’s ornate Victorian style.

The James and Hastings Building, above, is sited where the first log cabin was built in PT in 1851. The cabin was later replaced first by a dry goods store and in 1889 by the James and Hastings Building. This building was completed around the time that the bright future planned for PT dimmed. A depression in the late 1800s bankrupted over a quarter of U.S. railroads and the Northern Pacific Railroad failed to connect PT to Tacoma. Port Townsend lost much of its population and the local economy relied on fishing, port activities (including shanghaiing!), canning, and the miliary located at nearby Fort Worden. A paper mill built in the 1920s infused the economy with new purpose.

Tomorrow I’ll take a look at two other examples of Port Townsend’s Victorian architecture.