The KCHS
Historic Sites
Project.

This may be, in the long term, the most important work we do. It is an ongoing effort to identify, record and help preserve structures and places that have historic significance.  To re-define the old axiom, the walls can speak, and the stories that these treasures have to tell will last for generations. Identified locations are from all parts of the county and involve a cross-section of cultures, ranging from mercantile stores to school houses to industrial workshops.

Currently, the number of sites is far, far too extensive to publish here (although we will include a complete list, eventually) but we have selected a very few to share with you here.

The Chair of the KCHS Historic Sites Committee is Anetta Butler.

--To nominate a site, click this link--

Built to Serve the Navy,
1900's Coppersmith Shop,

Boasts a Storied Past and
Now it's a Manette Home.

Eric August Vall, known as August Wall, was born in Hudiksvll, Sweden, April 29, 1862. He arrived to work at the newly established Puget Sound Navy Yard in 1900. Vall’s job was to establish a copper shop at the navy yard. He was the first coppersmith employed and rose to be the first quarterman coppersmith, the highest rank a coppersmith could hold at that time.

Vall’s 16 year-old son, Walter, arrived July 1, 1901. He was big, strong, intelligent, and knew enough coppersmithing to be more qualified than many of the men who applied. Together they built the then customary tent-stand in a field north of the navy yard in what is now the Burwell Street area. To this tent he brought his wife Marta — born Marta Edllund May 16, 1864 — and their three other children, Walda, 13, Erik August Jr., 11, and Eda Christine, 5. They bought 10 acres in the Decatur township, later called Manette, in the Shore Drive and Perry Avenue area, and August was active in community affairs.

He built a one-room shop, 20 by 30 feet and two stories high, at what is now 223 Shore Drive. Here he set up a forge and a workbench and kept a complete set of coppersmithing tools and equipment. In 1910, August moved the family to Tacoma, where he started his own coppersmith business and subsequently worked for a shipbuilder in Seattle. He returned to the Navy Yard in 1926 and retired in 1930. He died in 1946 and Marta died in 1947.

In 1906, Eric August Wall donated acetylene lighting to the Bethany Baptist Church, a.k.a. Manette Community Church. He also built the weathervane for the two-story, four-room Manette School, built in 1912. When the building was torn down in 1959, the weathervane was given to Margaret Elliott, who had taught fourth grade at Manette for 29 years. She later presented it to the Kitsap County Historical Society.

(Click the thumbnail image, above, to view the structure as it appears today. Photo source unknown.)

The Bremerton Trust & Savings Bank Building:
A Symbol of Confidence, Strength, and Security.

In April 1914, the Bremer family announced that they would be constructing a new building for Bremerton Trust & Savings on the northeast corner of Second and Pacific. Dean of Architecture at University of Washington, Harlan Thomas, whose work Mrs. William (Sophia) Bremer admired, was the architect for the project.

Chartered in 1914, it was one of only four Bremerton banks to survive the depression. George E. Miller, former Port Orchard business owner and organizer of Kitsap County Bank in 1908, held the major interest. T.O. Buffington, owner of a general store on Washington Avenue and Third, was treasurer. Local businessman, James H. Braman, founder of Braman Millwork & Manufacturing Co, was one of the first five members.

The bank was sold to Peoples National Bank of Washington in 1949.Following World War I, the Navy paid the Bremer family for properties below Front Street (south of First Street) for expansion of the shipyard. With this money, the Bremer family constructed four more Harlan Thomas-designed buildings. Two that are still standing are the Harlan Building, 402 Pacific, and its mirror image, the Olympic Building on the northwest corner Fourth and Pacific.

202 Pacific Avenue is currently home to the architectural firm of Art Anderson & Associates.

The George Fellows Hall
Has Housed Various
Businesses Spanning
Ten Decades.

Originally the George Fellows Hall was built in 1904, with two ground-floor store rooms and a public hall upstairs at what is now 2202 Eleventh street in Manette. The builders of this sturdy wooden structure, if visiting it today, would marvel at the incredible number if reincarnations it would have experienced in the century since.

It was reported to have one of the best dance floors on the bay. The solid-oak ground floor and fir second floor are still there. More than two years later, in 1906, Panchet & Rodger General Store opened in that location.

George Card and his brother took over the store in September 1907, and A.B. Williams & Son Hardware & General Merchandise, purchased Card’s interest in 1908. George Fellows died May 25, 1910, and Thomas Fellows inherited the property, which he sold Jan. 30, 1912, to H.P. Martin.

In 1913, Martin traded the property to J.W. Meredith for a store owned by Meredith in Seattle. J.W. Meredith operated Manette- Rochdale Hardware until his son, Clyde, joined him and the business was renamed Meredith & Son Groceries, Hardware & Feed, 1918 – 1951.

Later, the building was rented by Vern Freeman’s Union Electric & Hardware, in the 1950 and 1960s. It has been home to The Gamesters and various other businesses, since the 1960s. From the opening night’s moving-picture entertainment and dance on Saturday, May 14, 1904, George Fellows Hall was the site of a varied schedule of community activities. Some of these events were box socials, improvement- club meetings, dances, political rallies, W.C.T.U. (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) meetings, Grange meetings, G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic), suffragettes, magic-lantern shows, church services, weddings, lodges, minstrel shows, Girl Scout meetings, and many other events.

We will be adding more profiles of historic sites as time permits. For more profiles, see the newsletter archives in the "Society News" section.