Wedgwood in Seattle History

In the 1950s Albert Balch, the developer of the Wedgwood neighborhood, was still building houses.  He did not keep with the same styles as when he started out, as housing trends and architectural styles evolved in the 1950s.  This article will tell about the group of houses called Country Club Heights which was built by a younger real estate agent who had started out working for Balch.  He followed Balch’s pattern of finding a prominent architect to design a group of houses in a particular style.

Albert Balch, the developer of Wedgwood, was a “networker.”  As a real estate salesman he knew that he must get his name known in the community.  He wanted to build relationships and establish himself as a trusted name in Seattle real estate.  He used several means to do this, including news articles about his projects, and he put shoe leather into getting out there to talk in-person with business owners.

8044 35th Ave NE, with its C-shaped sign, was Balch’s Crawford & Conover office. This building was demolished in 2018. Photo by Valarie.

Balch was interested in Washington State history.  One of the groups he belonged to was the Pioneer Association of Washington, which was for people whose families had come to Washington before statehood in 1889.

By the 1960s Balch realized that many of the people in that early generation were gone, and so he worked with some oldtimers like Joshua Green and C.T. Conover, to track down the descendants of early Washington settlers.   Balch served as president of the Pioneer Association from 1964-1967 and was credited with obtaining more than 3,500 new members for the Association. (Source: “Albert Balch Honored,” Seattle Times,  July 23, 1967, page 99.)

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