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A native of Rappahannock County, VA, Hilory Butler (born 03/31/1819) came to Seattle, WA, from Portland, OR, in the spring of 1853. Like most early settlers, Butler pursued various professions to earn a living, including as a teamster and merchant. Along with E.M. Smithers, with whom he had left Portland, he established the San Francisco Market in Seattle, an early dry goods store. This store prospered, providing him a solid income. He also got into drayage, a pursuit he followed for many years. Soon after his arrival, Butler bought a land parcel 120 feet square for $150, on which he built this house. Butler constructed the frame dwelling with lumber obtained from Henry Yesler's new nearby sawmill. Butler's residence occupied a quarter-block lot, on which he operated a small truck farm. By the 1880s, land in Pioneer Square was escalating in value, as more and more newcomers settled in town. On the site of his house, he erected a three-story frame commercial building from which derived rental income. This building was incinerated in the Great Fire of 1889. Thereafter, he sold his property for $75,000 to enable more intense commercial development; supposedly he sold the land with the provision that any building on the lot retain his name. Guy C. Phinney and Daniel C. Jones partnered on a new building--originally known as the Phinney and Jones Building--erected on the northwest corner of Second and James Streets in 1890. During the 1890s and early 20th century, the block contained the Butler Hotel, long one of the city's most fashionable addresses.

When interviewed in 1888, Butler said of this house: "I built this house in 1853, and it was about the finest residence in the city at that time. It was then on the outskirts, and people wondered why I should go out in the woods to build a house. The old structure has outlived its usefulness, however, and must now give way to a more pretentious structure." (See "Why He Builds of Wood," Seattle Daily Post-Intelligencer, 02/10/1888, p. 3, col. 2.)

Demolished; a newspaper article, "Why He Builds of Wood," in the Seattle Daily Post-Intelligencer, 02/10/1888, noted that Butler was in the process of tearing his house down at this time. He erected the eponymous wood-frame Butler Building #1 on this location for about one year, when it burned in the Great Fire of 06/06/1889.

PCAD id: 14805