Buidling History

A design for a girls' "parental school" for a seven-and-a-half-acre site on Holly Street in Rainier Beach was being prepared by the Seattle Public Schools Architect Floyd Naramore in 06/1919. (A "parental school" was a correctional school erected to cure students of truancy.) An article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencerdescribed the project: "The monthly maintenance bill of the Seattle school district, amounting to $56,155.16, was passed at a special school board meeting held in the Central building Tuesday noon. Twenty-five thousand dollars of this amount is for the first half payment on the site, for the new girls parental school on Holly street, at Rainier Beach. F.A. Naramore, the school board architect, is working on plans for the new parental school and expects work to begin on the plant some time in the next two months. The seven and one-half-acre site can be developed into a beautiful home for girls, according to Mr. Naramore. The grounds are on a point and since Lake Washington was lowered, when the canal was opened, there has been a fine beach, which will be made into a playground. The home will be laid out on the cottage system, with nine cottages, each to hold about twenty girls, an administration building with a hospital wing; receiving cottage, school building, out of doors gymnasium, power house and caretakers' and helpers' cottages. The ultimate cost of the plant, Mr. Naramore estimates, will be $150,000, but the first units, he does not think will cost more than $50,000." (See "New Home for Girls," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 06/18/1919, p. 5.)

PCAD id: 22941