AKA: Odd Fellows Lodge 86, Fremont, Seattle, WA

Structure Type: built works - recreation areas and structures

Designers: [unspecified]

Dates: constructed 1926-1927

3 stories, total floor area: 14,058 sq. ft.

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3509 Fremont Avenue North
Fremont, Seattle, WA 98103-8813

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The International Order of Odd Fellows Lodge #86 was chartered 01/1891, and the IOOF built a modest wood-frame meeting hall soon thereafter; this second, more elaborate three-story building was dedicated on 06/01/1927. Comparable to other fraternal halls, the IOOF's meeting spaces occupied upper floors, while revenue-generating retail spaces lined the first. Between the 1930s and c. 1992, Auditorium Cleaners occupied the corner storefront. In 1980s-2000s, resale shops occupied some of the first floor storefronts. Next door to the west, DeLuxe Junk, a legendary purveyor of vintage furniture, clothing, and other interior decor items, operated for many years. From 1993-2001, the Empty Space Theatre rented space in the building. In 2013, the owners of the building were Michael and Rose Peck.

This flat-iron shaped building occupied a prominent position at the intersection of Fremont Place North, Fremont Avenue North and North 35th Street. It housed the offices and meeting spaces of the International Order of Odd Fellows, a benevolent fraternal organization, that, in the 19th century, was one of the largest in the US. The first floors have accommodated a variety of retail and restaurant establishments since its construction in 1927. The first floor is clad in cast stone horizontally scored. The second story is lined with double-hung windows, most adorned solely with a cast stone lintel. The third floor fenestration featured paired double-hung windows, each with an arch above filled with ornamentation. Just under the parapet, a long molding wrapped the building on three sides; ornamental machicolations, one of the building's most remarkable decorative features, lined the facade under the molding. The parapet line also had three subtle crests at the corner. The doorway that housed the Empty Space Theatre at 3509 Fremont Avenue North had a Romanesque character, with cable moldings and voussoirs echoing the arch's shape. Paired Corinthian columns "supported" the archway.

Alterations have been made by most new retail tenants. Some of the building's brick facing peeled away on its south side, crushing a metal awning that covered shoppers on Fremont Place North. No one was injured. Metal rods that held the bricks to a cinderblock wall rusted and broke. The owner removed the cinderblock wall backing the brick veneer, and added new reinforcing rods tying the wall to a new brick facing that replicated the old.