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Overview

The husband-and-wife architectural team of John and Audrey Van Horne designed this Hilltop residence for John L. Prechek and his wife, the interior designer Patricia Shively Prechek. Patricia Prechek directed the interior furnishing of this house.

Building History

The Seattle-based husband-and-wife architectural team of Van Horne and Van Horne designed this residence for John L. Prechek, a former star tackle on the UW football team and Patricia Shively Prechek, who would become a world-renowned interior designer. The Van Hornes designed the two-floor residence for a hilly lot, with the main floor set on grade in the front (east side) and the rear supported by wooden piers. An exposed basement was daylit on the west side. Due to a relatively steep hill leading up to the house, it cannot be seen well from the street. Primary views of Seattle, Mount Rainier and the Olympic Mountains faced west, and were highlighted by a wall of windows in the living room on the house's north end.

The Prechek House, like many of its period, had a plan organized in three zones: a projecting living/dining room on the north, the middle containing a spacious entryway, and the bedroom wing on the south. In houses of this time period, bedroom clusters were often zoned to be most distant from the living/dining areas, to minimize acoustic distractions emanating from each. This was a period when children were numerous and adults often entertained, so separation was seen as particularly desirable.

The Precheks did not live in this house for long. They left by the late 1950s, and Manfred and Joan McNeil moved in, residing here into the 2010s.

Building Notes

Proportions for the house needed to be slightly larger than average, as Patricia Shively was tall and John Prechek stood 6-foot, 5-inches tall.

The Prechek House possessed a swimming pool, one of the few to have this amenity at Hilltop.

The Precheks later divorced and Patricia Shively married the interior designer Dale Keller (1929-2016), with whom she established an international interior design firm, based in Hong Kong, New York and London, that specialized in luxury hotels.

PCAD id: 15000