In a recent property feature, Seattle PI covered the balance of tradition with modern touches by taking a tour of WillowDon Estate, an impeccable residence listed by Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty brokers Mary and Paige Norris. As the PI outlines, “there’s a lot of history in the halls of the WillowDon Estate, and it’s growing out back too.”
The article describes the 1927 main home that hearkens to its storied past with “leaded windows with stained-glass embellishments to see Mount Rainier from, an elegant stucco façade, a peaked roof,” but that is positioned for a modern lifestyle with technologically savvy updates including a soaking tub and rain shower in the master suite and a converted wine cellar.
Updates to the home include a wine cellar, which previously served as the Palmer’s vault.
And as the PI notes, “the historic blend doesn’t stop at the walls of the house.”
WillowDon Estate encapsulates two acres of Olmsted Brothers-designed gardens, renowned landscape architects that “played an influential role in creating the National Park Service,” and who “were commissioned to do things like the roadways in the Great Smoky Mountains and Yosemite, and entire park systems in Cleveland, Portland, and Seattle.”
The gardens continue down terraces all the way to 174 feet of Lake Washington waterfront, which the article says earns the title it was given in a 1939 Seattle Times article that described a party on the grounds: “the most super-extraordinary garden event ever staged in the city of Seattle.”
