The development of Wedgwood’s first business district began with J.W. (Joe) Shauer, an enterprising businessman who moved his family from Greenwood to Wedgwood in 1920.  Mr. Shauer (pronounced shower) paid $1,000 for an acre of property on the west side of 35th Ave NE between NE 85th to 86th Streets.  On the corner of NE 86th Street, the site now occupied by Wells Fargo Bank, the Shauers built a one-room house with a screened porch on one side.  The house was truly “out in the country,” as it was without running water or electricity; electricity wasn’t brought that far out on 35th Ave NE until 1923.

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The Shauer family, pictured here in 1928, lived at the corner of NE 86th Street, present site of the Wells Fargo Bank.  At left can be seen the house which was built for tenants to live in, while running the grocery and gas station which Mr. Shauer built at the corner of NE 85th Street.  Photo used by permission of Shauer family; do not copy.

In the 1920s Joe Shauer’s interest in cars led him to open a tire shop at 55th & Roosevelt in north Seattle.   In the prosperous economy of the 1920s when many Seattle residents acquired cars, Mr. Shauer’s tire shop was very successful.

The Shauers soon had enough money to hire a carpenter to enlarge and improve their house on the corner of NE 86th Street in Wedgwood, including wiring for electricity which had become available.

In 1927 Mr. Shauer expanded his business interests by opening Wedgwood’s first gas station and garage next to his house.   He repaired cars and sold Violet Ray gasoline, Quaker State motor oil and Federal tires.

In the 1920s Shauer’s grocery and gas station was on 35th Ave NE at the northwest corner of NE 85th Street. Later Mr. Shauer’s car repair garage became a cafe and beer parlor.  The parking lot behind the present-day stores on this block was also part of Mr. Shauer’s property.  Photo used by permission of Shauer family; do not copy.

Mr. Shauer expands his business enterprises

Mr. Shauer’s next business enterprise was to build a small grocery store at the corner of NE 85th Street, adjoining the gas station and garage along 35th Ave NE.   The grocery store met a great need because there were few stores in the area.   Local housewives needed a store within walking distance where they could get basic supplies.  Rather than run the store themselves, the Shauers leased out the grocery, having also built a small house behind the store where the tenants could live.

Economic downturn impacts the business

The good times of the 1920s came to a screeching halt with the stock market crash of October 31, 1929.  Fear over economic conditions caused people to stop spending money, which in turn caused industries to lay off workers because of the business downturn.  Large numbers of unemployed people made the economy even worse, and by 1931 things were at a standstill.   The lessees of the Shauer’s grocery store in Wedgwood couldn’t make a go of it because business had dropped.

In the 1920s Joe Shauer opened a gas station and small grocery on this block next to his house, between NE 85th to 86th Streets along 35th Ave NE in Wedgwood.

The Shauers began running the store themselves.   Many of their customers were “on the books,” buying groceries on credit, and some never came back to pay their bill.   People gave up their cars because of the economic conditions of the Great Depression, and they went “back to basics” by planting gardens and keeping chickens.   Mr. Shauer’s gas station remained open but the garage was converted to a feed-and-seed store, selling chicken feed and live chicks raised by Mrs. Shauer.

In 1933 the ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages, called Prohibition, was repealed and Mr. Shauer converted his garage/feed store into a café and beer parlor, decked out with tables covered with blue-and-white checked cloths.  Although the repeal of Prohibition had to be ratified state-by-state before hard liquor could be sold, as of April 1933 Congress permitted sales of a watery three-two beer, so called because it contained only 3.2 percent alcohol.  Mr. Shauer didn’t want to run the beer parlor himself, so he leased out this business to a German immigrant, Charlie Hofsvang.

Changes in the neighborhood

In the 1920s the Shauer’s nearest neighbor was Mr. Thorpe.  Mr. Thorpe’s log cabin became the Chapel of St. Ignatius in November 1929. The small room on the left side was added for use of the priest to rest and change clothes after travelling out from Seattle University.  Photo from Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church historic records.

Meanwhile, the Shauers were growing weary of the fifteen-hour work days at their grocery store.   Mr. Shauer was also alarmed about the plan to build a new campus for Seattle University on a neighboring tract of land, Mr. Thorpe’s ginseng farm, which had been sold to the Jesuits in early October 1929.  Mr. Shauer believed his businesses were dependent upon customers drawn from a residential neighborhood, and that being located next to a Catholic seminary would not be a successful business environment.

The Shauers decided to sell it all — their house, land and businesses — and look for opportunities elsewhere.   They could not have foreseen that the proposed Catholic university campus would never be built.  Instead, Albert Balch bought the Jesuit’s land in 1940 and developed it into the original Wedgwood housing tract, a five-block square bounded by 30th to 35th Avenues NE and NE 80th to 85th Streets.

The Wedgwood Ale House at 8515 35th Ave NE is in the same space as Mr. Shauer’s old feed store and gas station.  Photo by Valarie.

A later owner of Mr. Shauer’s property, Henry R. Hansen, built the commercial building that exists today at 8507 35th Ave NE and includes storefronts on the south end of the block and the Wedgwood Ale House in mid-block.

One of Mr. Hansen’s first tenants was McVicar Hardware, which operated from 1946 to 1986 in the storefronts space.  In years following there was a bike shop and then the All That Dance studio.  In 2019 the longtime owner of the dance studio moved the business to a larger space near University Village.  At 8507 35th Ave NE the businesses include a yoga studio, jiu jitsu, a florist, barber and bubble tea shop.

In 1945-1946 when the old Hansen’s Tavern was replaced by the present building, it was renamed the Wedgwood Tavern, according to listings in the phone book.  Hansen’s Tavern was likely the first neighborhood business to change its name to Wedgwood.  The name “caught on” as the neighborhood businesses gradually took on the Wedgwood identity.

The Wells Fargo bank building in Wedgwood is on 35th Ave NE at NE 86th Street, former site of the Shauer family’s house.

In 1955 Mr. Shauer’s house at the corner of NE 86th Street was replaced by Bud Gagnon’s Wedgewood Pharmacy.  It in turn was torn down in 1972 and the brick bank building built in its place.  The first bank in that building was University Federal Savings, 1972 to 1992.

Sources

Interview with Ruth Shauer Jameson in 1993.  Mrs. Jameson’s recollection that the cafe and beer parlor opened in 1933 and served three-two beer, confirms that this ancestor of the Wedgwood Ale House was the first tavern to open in Wedgwood.  The Fiddler’s Inn at 9219 35th Ave NE did not open until late in the year 1934.  Another tavern, Ida’s Inn at 7500 35th Ave NE, opened sometime in 1934 or 1935 and closed in 1948.

Telephone book and city directory listings:  the downtown Seattle Public Library has phone books  going back into the 1920s and other kinds of city directories going back a century or more.  Businesses can often be traced in this way, by their listings with the approximate dates of opening, closing and name changes.  Other locations which have the old city directories, but not phone books, are the Seattle Municipal Archives in Seattle City Hall, and Special Collections at the University of Washington Library.

The corner business block at 8507 35th Ave NE has five small shops.  The trees which line 35th Ave NE are called flame ash.  They were planted by the City of Seattle street tree program in the 1960s to early 1970s.