11608 SW Shawnee Rd
Vashon, WA, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Shawnee House (Shaw, Millard F. and Josephine, House)

Statement of Significant:

Shawnee House embodies in its construction, design, ownership, and history an urban affluence which found its expression in the building of homes on the beaches of Puget Sound in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The western shore of lower Quartermaster Harbor on Vashon Island was the location of one such community, Magnolia Beach, which was founded by wealthy Tacoma-area residents. The imposing architecture, expansive gardens and grounds, and major Mosquito Fleet dock make Shawnee House the grandest estate of this era. Shawnee House is also significant due to its architect, Max A. Van House, who moved to Vashon Island as a young child, lived close to the Shaw family, and designed Shawnee House while working for the Tacoma architectural firm of Heath and Gove. His later career included many important buildings in Tacoma and Butte, Montana.
While Shawnee House is significant in its representation of an era, the original Shaw property is also important to Native peoples, historically as the site of the major outlet of the Fisher Creek Watershed, today known as Fisher Creek. This creek was once a habitat for trout and the primary source for fresh water along what was known as "the Shawnee flats."2 Because of the creek, the western shore of Quartermaster Harbor--including what became Magnolia Beach, the present site of Shawnee House, and the Shaw property before it was subdivided--had been occupied by Native Americans for centuries before its history began to be recorded by the later pioneers. The site may have archaeological potential due to its historical documentation; however this nomination only concerns the historic era. No known archaeological work has been done in this area to support aboriginal occupation.
Evidence of Native American buildings--specifically on the site of what was to become Magnolia Beach, of which Shawnee House was a part--comes from testimony given in a 1926 trial from Lucy Gerand, a Native American who lived on Vashon Island; and Thomas Talbot Waterman, a turn-of-the-century linguist. Gerand referred to her people as the "Shomamish," and associated them with the Puyallup Indians from the Puyallup River region. According to Gerand, the tribe spent the winter season--mid-November to March--in longhouses, several of which were located in Quartermaster Harbor.3 According to Waterman, "...along the north shore of Quartermaster Harbor's outer harbor, starting from the west and heading east, the house site named "AHL-al- ul," old houses," was located at what is now Magnolia Beach."
In 1841 the first step towards white settlement of the island took place when the United States Exploring Expedition charted Vashon and Maury Islands and the harbor; it is to the expedition's famous leader, Commander Charles Wilkes, that the harbor owes its name, "as a fancied haven for the spirits of his petty.

According to Oliver Van Olinda, a late nineteenth century local historian and photographer, Quartermaster Harbor is also Vashon Island's Massachusetts Bay, complete with its own equivalent of Plymouth Rock. In 1877 Salmon Sherman, John Gilman, Daniel Price, and their families sailed from Tacoma and landed on the bay's northeastern shore, also at a famous rock, to establish what is popularly believed to be "the first pioneer settlement."

$800.00. By 1899 the Yacht Club had been re-established, but not at Manzanita. No houses were built during this early period before the Panic, and it was not until 1904 that serious construction of summer housing began at Manzanita.

It was on the harbor's western shore that the island's most important summer community, Magnolia Beach, was eventually established. The site of the development was homesteaded in 1878--only one year after the Shermans landed in the harbor--by Silas Cook, and named for his hometown, Magnolia, Iowa. In 1902 C.A. and Della Cook subdivided part of the homestead into 23 lots in dimensions of 100' X 500', widths that were unusually spacious compared to those of 25' and 50' at Manzanita and a later development south of Magnolia Beach, Harbor Heights. The expansive lot sizes encouraged the construction of large summer residences, no doubt contributing to Magnolia Beach's reputation as "the haven of the upper crust of the summer people."

Magnolia Beach was the first planned community on Quartermaster Harbor to be platted for summer residences, followed by Harbor Heights in 1906, Northilla in 1909, and Rosehilla in 1911. None of these communities were to achieve the social and financial success of Magnolia Beach; Harbor Heights, for example,
was:
A real estate salesman's plat with property that would have been nearly impossible to build upon. The plat shows a street "Beach Way" leading up to three streets that parallel the beach. Since the west side of the harbor has an even steeper bank than the east side, the road just could not have been climbed. There is no evidence the roads were ever put in. In fact, a house which has apparently been there as long as any of the other houses, sits in the middle of the site of Beach Drive.

In 1906 the flamboyant Ira Case, President of the Tacoma Soap Company, moved from Tacoma and built a four-story building which served as a residence, grocery, bakery, post office, and inn. Case, his wife Jessie, and daughter Margaret christened the rambling house "Marjesira," an acronym of their names and it became the hub of the community. The construction of Marjesira encouraged the building of other summer residences on

At the end of the nineteenth century, another event took place that had far-reaching consequences for the harbor: Puget Sound was connected to eastern markets by the transcontinental railroads. This development had a profound impact upon the physical and economic growth of western Washington. One result was the flourishing of a new leisure class, which manifested its wealth by building seasonal and, in some cases, year- around residences along the pristine shores of islands adjacent to metropolitan areas. Since automobile ferries were not yet established and travel by land was still difficult, the transportation offered by the Mosquito Fleet made these communities possible. Quartermaster Harbor, with its protected bay and easy accessibility to Tacoma (only eight miles from Burton by steamer), became a natural location for this phenomenon.
In the late 1890s the first effort to establish a recreational development on Quartermaster Harbor took place when the North Tacoma Improvement Company and the Tacoma Yacht Club purchased all of Sections 31, 32, and 5 on Maury Island in 1889. The Tacoma Yacht Club Park, an area that later became Manzanita Beach, was platted in 1892 on a tract 1,000' deep running 2,200' along the shore of the southeast side of Quartermaster harbor. Called a "real estate promoter's dream," the ten acres donated to the Yacht Club are in the center of the plat, with 11 roads planned to lead to houses on plats 25' X 300'. The community of Rosehilla was planned as a part of the Yacht Club development but was not actually platted until much later, in 1911.
The club house was begun in 1890, "a typical Victorian mansion some 125' square, three stories tall, with an enormous veranda that looked out over Quartermaster Harbor, most of the ground floor was taken up by a huge dining room and ballroom." The Club appeared to be flourishing until the Panic of 1893 when bills could not be paid and the club property, including 10 acres, the mansion, and furniture were all sold at auction for

Magnolia Beach, and it eventually influenced the entire west side of the harbor, from Burton south. When Shawnee House was built in 1916, it was considered a part of Magnolia Beach."

The development of a community closely aligned with Tacoma had political as well as economic implications. No where has this been more succinctly stated than in Howard W. Lynn's account of the growth of Quartermaster Harbor, Lieutenant Maury's Island and the Quartermaster's Harbor: unseen is an invisible wall that divides this small island so palpably that one can almost feel it. From the earliest times there has existed what old timers call the Mason-Dixon line. This runs laterally across the island from Portage to Lisabeula. Anyone north of this line (the area which has the agricultural land, the largest town and the bulk of the industry, both at present and in history) is a total stranger to anyone living south of the line. There is no apparent political, economic, or social difference that can be noted as accounting for this division, it is just there. North of the line the trade is with Seattle, south of the line is with Tacoma. Even today interviews are noted in which someone will be speaking of an old-time neighbor, one he went to school with in the early years of the century, and note that, "a few years ago he moved up there" indicating an area north of the line. The friend is gone, he moved to a foreign country perhaps five miles away over good roads."