Sam Hill House
- Architect
- Hornblower & Marshall
- Style
- Neoclassical
- City
- Seattle, WA
The Sam Hill House was built in 1909-1910 on Capitol Hill by railroad magnate Sam Hill, reportedly in preparation for a visit from a member of the Belgian royal family. Designed by the Washington, D.C. firm Hornblower & Marshall in a Classical Revival style, its concrete facades and formal terraces were meant to evoke a European chateau.
the building
Concrete chateau. The house is built of concrete rather than the wood or brick typical of Seattle mansions of its era, with formal terraces and facades designed to recall a European chateau.
The Plestcheeff years. After Hill's death in 1931 the house sat empty for six years, until Seattle society figure and preservation advocate Guendolen Plestcheeff bought it in 1937. She modernized parts of the interior while retaining its historic character and lived there until her death in 1994; in 1987 she founded the Plestcheeff Institute of Decorative Arts on the premises.
the style
Hornblower & Marshall designed the house in a Classical Revival, or Neoclassical, style, giving Sam Hill's Capitol Hill mansion the formal symmetry and stone-faced grandeur of a European estate rather than the Victorian idiom common to Seattle's older mansions.
More on Neoclassicalthe architect
Hornblower & Marshall was a Washington, D.C. architecture firm commissioned by Sam Hill to design this Capitol Hill mansion, completed in 1910.
significance
The house forms part of the city-designated Harvard-Belmont Landmark District and is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- Seattle Asian Art Museum at Volunteer Park
- Naval Reserve Armory
- Ward House
- Immanual Lutheran Church
- 1600 East John Street Apartments
- Seattle Times Bldg - Printing Plant