Overview

Local businessman Cyrus F. Clapp commissioned this office/store building c. 1884. It initially housed the Peyser Brother Dry Goods Store, but this was replaced soon after construction by a bank owned by Clapp and his partner, J.H. Feuerbach. This load-bearing, masonry-walled building was constructed of bricks set four wide. The Washington Iron Works in Seattle produced the the cast iron cross beam, engaged columns and other components lining the shop windows on the first floor.

Building History

Cyrus F. Clapp, born in 1851 in Piscataquis County, ME, a large county occupying much of the state's center. He resided in that state until he left home at age 14 to attend the Hanover Academy, in Hanover, MA. Following this, he continued his education, studying abroad first at the Royal Institute of Belfast, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and then at Saint Andrews College in Saint Andrews, Scotland. When he returned to the US, he obtained work with the dry goods retailer, Jordan Marsh and Company, in Boston. He decided to leave New England, first traveling to CA during the summer of 1870, and then heading north to Port Townsend, WA, in the fall of that year. In Port Townsend, he assisted his maternal uncle, J.J. Hunt, in running the Cosmopolitan Hotel, where he first worked as a clerk. He bought the hotel from Hunt in 1876 and sold it three years later.

In 1879, he established a retail business in New Dungeness, WA, which became a financial success. Clapp co-founded the Merchants’ Bank of Port Townsend in 1887, which opened in this building after the Peyser Brother Dry Goods Store left. Clapp operated it here until about 1890, when he moved to Seattle, and got into real estate development, building the Clapp Building at 1117 3rd Avenue in 1901-1902.

Following Clapp's departure, the building bearing his name was occupied by the Donofrio Saloon (1890-1892), Otto Bauer's Merchant Saloon (1892-c.1901) and Michel DeLeo's Roma Saloon (c. 1901 until 1916, when Prohibition began in WA State.) (See The Port Townsend Historic Building Plaque Project, "Clapp Building," accessed 03/31/2016.)

PCAD id: 20106