Building History

According to a photograph in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Harry Tracy, "the last of our Wild West desperadoes," was captured at this residence in 1902. The caption read: "It was in this house, still standing at 5011 Phinney Ave., where Harry Tracy, the desperado, met up with the law." (See "Bandit House," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 05/23/1947, p. 15. See also Frank Lynch, "Seattle Scene," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 05/23/1947, p. 13.) As told by Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Frank Lynch, Tracy was a fugitive when police spotted him on 07/03/1902 in Bothell. He killed one police officer there and seriously wounded another, before commandeering Bothell farmer Louis Johnson's horse and wagon. He directed Johnson to drive him to Seattle, where they stopped to eat. The house's occupant, Mrs. R.H. Van Horn, fed Johnson and Tracy, before another posse appeared at her house. Tracy shot his way out of this predicament, killing posse member Neil Rawley and wounding another, policeman E.E. Breese. He fled moving east, into what was then a densely wooded area, Woodland Park. (See Frank Lynch, "Seattle Scene," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 05/23/1947, p. 13.)

The Lynch article described the house in 1947: "The house still stands, now between two large apartment houses. It has been built into a duplex, and Mrs. R.E. Underwood lives in the upper part. Mrs. Underwood is a granddaughter of the late Frank Newell, long a caretaker of Woodland Park, and she has lived most of her life in the neighborhood, once in the part iteself. Mrs. Underwood says that the house is very much like it was. There is a new coat of brick siding, but the oldfahioned porch still stands, facing the sunsets. The rooms are large and high ceilinged. Mrs. Underwood has heard a lot of Tracy, naturally. It was 45 years ago that he went through here, guns roaring; 45 years is a mighty long time. But Mrs. Underwood says that people still come to see the Tracy house, that they stand on the sidewalk looking at it, and that some even ask her about it." (See Frank Lynch, "Seattle Scene," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 05/23/1947, p. 13.)

PCAD id: 24344