Wedgwood Ale House
Until recent changes, the Wedgwood neighborhood’s two pubs, the Wedgwood Ale House and the Fiddler’s Inn, anchored the business intersections of NE 85th and 95th Streets along the main arterial of 35th Avenue NE.
Update: As of December 2023 the Wedgwood Ale House property was sold. The new owner of the building would not renew the lease for the present business. The Ale House closed on December 28, 2023. I will continue to update this info if the Ale House ever re-opens in another location.
As of 2024 the former Ale House building is being renovated for new businesses. Photo by Valarie.
Despite the closure of the Wedgwood Ale House, I have kept other info in this blog article the same as it is meant to outline the history of taverns in Wedgwood.
The story of the founding of each tavern in the 1930s reflects the growth and development of the Wedgwood neighborhood. Today, the word “pub” is often used to indicate the expansion of the menu with meals as well as drinks, and activity programs of music, watching sports on TV, or special events such as a trivia contest.
Copyright notice: The text and photos on this article are protected under a Creative Commons Copyright. Do not copy without permission.
The Shauer family, pictured here in 1928, lived on 35th Ave NE at the corner of NE 86th Street, present site of the Wells Fargo bank building in Wedgwood. Photo used by permission; do not copy.
In 1920 Joe W. Shauer and his family moved from the Greenwood neighborhood to northeast Seattle. The Shauers built a one-room house on 35th Ave NE at the corner of NE 86th Street, present site of the Wells Fargo Bank.
The 1920s was an era of relative prosperity and business expansion, especially for consumer products such as cars. Mr. Shauer’s tire shop at NE 55th Street & Roosevelt Way NE was so successful that he decided to expand into other car-related businesses at the site of his new home on 35th Ave NE. The site was remote and the neighborhood as yet had no name.
Even before 1920, the rough one-lane 35th Avenue NE was beginning to be used by cars. There was no streetcar or other transportation service out as far as the future Wedgwood neighborhood, and in the 1920s the increasing number of northeast Seattle residents had to have a car to get around. Because of the increase in car traffic, Mr. Shauer thought that a gas station would be a successful business next door to his house on 35th Avenue NE, at what is now the main intersection of Wedgwood at NE 85th Street.
In the 1920s Joe Shauer opened a gas station and small grocery on this block next to his house. Photo by Valarie.
The Shauers owned one acre of land along 35th Ave NE from corner-to-corner of NE 85th to 86th Streets including the area of the present storefronts, the Wedgwood Ale House and the Wells Fargo Bank.
On this street-front site next to his house, Mr. Shauer built a gas station and garage, with another house behind it for a tenant to live in, on what is now the parking lot behind the businesses. The tenant was the person who would run the grocery store and gas station, since Mr. Shauer still had another job at that time.
This photo circa 1927 shows the Shauers house (present site of Wells Fargo Bank) with the new gas station Mr. Shauer had opened. The Shauers owned this property facing 35th Avenue NE between NE 85th to 86th Streets. The large stand of Douglas fir trees in the background was on the property of Mr. Thorpe the ginseng farmer. Photo used by permission of the Shauer family; do not copy.
The Shauers try to establish businesses in the 1920s
In 1920 when the Shauers first moved to their house on the corner of NE 86th Street, they had very few neighbors. Today, the corners of NE 85th and 86th Streets on 35th Ave NE are commercial intersections, but in the 1920s these corners were vacant. Some properties were owned by absentee landlords such as Walter Fulton, now the site of the QFC grocery, Wedgwood Broiler restaurant, and other businesses.
On the southwest corner of NE 85th Street, a forty-acre tract from NE 80th to 85th was owned by Charles Thorpe, a grower of ginseng for the Chinese herbal-shop market in Seattle. Mr. Thorpe did not clear all of his land, and its stand of tall trees can be seen in the background of the above photo of the Shauers’ house and businesses.
Later in the 1920s as the neighborhood became more populated, the Shauers built a small grocery store which had basic supplies like flour, sugar, and eggs. But the prosperity of the 1920s took a downturn in 1929 when a stock market crash shocked the U.S. economy, setting off what was called the Great Depression. When investment and production of consumer goods was sharply cut back, a vicious circle of job losses and reduced spending caused the economy to spiral downward. One of the first ways that people tried to economize was to get rid of their cars, with the result that car-oriented businesses such as gas stations and tire shops closed. The Shauers also began to have trouble with their grocery store because customers would charge groceries but never come back to pay.
in the 1920s Shauer’s grocery and gas station was at the corner of NE 85th Street, on the west side of 35th Ave NE. Later the car repair garage became a cafe and beer parlor. Photo used by permission of the Shauer family; do not copy.
Which was first: The Wedgwood Ale House or the Fiddlers Inn?
During the economic depression in the early 1930s the Shauers turned their little grocery into a feed store selling poultry feed and live chicks, since everyone had gone “back to basics” and was trying to raise more of their own food. Next the Shauers tried opening a café which sold “three-two beer” containing 3.2% alcohol.
Ruth in front of the Shauer home with her dog Lindy, named in honor of the September 1927 visit of Charles Lindbergh, aviator, to Seattle. In the background is the house of the lessee who helped run the grocery store on Shauer’s business block.
During the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt beginning in 1932, Congress voted that Prohibition (the ban on all alcoholic beverages) had been a failure, and they started the process of repealing it. Before Prohibition officially ended in January 1934, as of April 1933 the sale of beer containing 3.2% alcohol was permitted.
In the 1990s I was privileged to interview Joe Shauer’s daughter Ruth and hear her tell about life in the Wedgwood neighborhood in the 1920s and 1930s. Although Ruth did not recall whether her parents’ café had a name, Ruth’s recollection was that “three-two beer” was sold at the café beginning in 1933, proving that the Shauers had the first neighborhood establishment to sell any kind of alcoholic drinks.
The Shauer’s café didn’t last long. Ruth’s father was struggling because of economic conditions and he was unhappy about the lack of business growth in the neighborhood.
In 1929 the Shauer’s neighbor Charles Thorpe sold his property to the Jesuits of Seattle University, who at first planned to move the school out to the site on the block to the south of the Shauers. Mr. Shauer felt that having the seminary nearby would not be a good business environment, so he decided to move away. Mr. Shauer could not have predicted that the planned Jesuit seminary campus would never materialize, and that the Shauer’s former home and business site at NE 85th Street would become the center of the future Wedgwood neighborhood.
The Wedgwood Tavern
The Wedgwood Ale House at 8515 35th Ave NE. Photo by Valarie.
The next owner of the Shauer’s house and store was Mr. Hansen. In 1945 he re-built the site with a new tavern and a storefront building at 8507 35th Ave NE. The first business to occupy the new storefront building was McVicar & Son Hardware.
Phone book listings show that circa 1945, the tavern’s name was changed from Hansen’s Tavern to Wedgwood Tavern, the first business in the neighborhood to call itself after the development started by Albert Balch. Later called Wedgwood Ale House, it was the historic site of two “firsts” in the neighborhood: the first site to serve alcohol and the first business to take on the Wedgwood identity.
In 1940 the Jesuits decided not to move Seattle University away from the site where the school is still located today, close to downtown. They sold their forty-acre tract in the (future) Wedgwood to Albert Balch. Balch’s housing development called Wedgwood, between NE 80th to 85th Streets, 30th to 35th Avenues NE, gradually caught on as the name of the neighborhood. After the Hansen’s Tavern was re-named Wedgwood Tavern circa 1945, other businesses began calling themselves Wedgwood.
The Fiddler’s Inn comes next
Walt Haines was a professional musician who struggled during the economic depression years of the early 1930s when people no longer had money to go out for entertainment. After Prohibition ended in 1934 and beer and wine were again being sold to the public, more and more people tried to go into that business. Walt Haines looked around at what others were doing and decided to open his own tavern.
Walt Haines at far right with his tuba is pictured here with the Tommy Thomas orchestra in 1938. Photo used by permission; do not copy.
Walt had been living in northeast Seattle in the 1920s and he was aware of the excitement caused by the opening of the Naval Air Station on Sand Point Way NE. People in northeast Seattle were optimistic that the naval base would boost the economy and cause more development of businesses and roads. In 1927 the City of Seattle officially named Sand Point Way NE and began to put it through as an arterial (see source list info below).
The 95th Barber Shop, built in 1939, is pictured here in a 1948 tax assessors photo.
In addition to the new Sand Point Way NE, one of the other new roads to be put through was NE 95th Street. In 1931 King County awarded a contract to Fiorito Brothers to build this new arterial NE 95th Street connecting Sand Point Way NE to Victory Way (today’s Lake City Way NE).
In anticipation of more traffic travelling across NE 95th Street to and from the naval base, Wedgwood-area residents began opening businesses at the intersection of 35th Ave NE & NE 95th Street. Today, the last original building near the NE 95th Street intersection is the barber shop (built 1939) at 9516 35th Ave NE.
In 1994 the Fiddler’s Inn still looked exactly as it had been built by Walt Haines in 1934. Photo by Valarie.
In 1934 Walt Haines took a look at the activity at the NE 95th Street intersection, with stores and businesses being built there, and he decided that it would be a good location for his new tavern. He built the tavern himself on 35th Ave NE at the corner of NE 94th Street, opening it later in the year 1934.
Walt’s decision to wait until autumn to open the Fiddler’s Inn had to do with the fact that he had become a single father. His little daughter Gerry would be old enough to attend first grade in September 1934. Walt and Gerry lived in rooms at the back of the tavern and Gerry attended Maple Leaf School. When Walt remarried in 1939 he built a house for his family behind the tavern to the west, facing NE 94th Street.
We know that the Fiddlers Inn was the second tavern to open in the neighborhood, and today in Wedgwood the Fiddlers Inn has the second-longest continuous run with the same business name.
Neighborhood business names
The Morningside Market opened in 1926 with a grocery on one side and a butcher shop on the other side. Today there is a fresh-food vendor, La Pasta, on one side of the Morningside Market. Photo by Valarie.
Wedgwood’s longest-running business under the same name is the Morningside Market at 9118 35th Ave NE which opened in 1926. The Morningside Market was named for the Morningside real estate development nearby.
The Morningside Church was built in 1926 at 9505 35th Avenue NE, present site of a veterinary clinic. In 1951 the church moved to 8008 35th Ave NE and became Wedgwood Presbyterian.
Morningside Market as well as the Fiddler’s Inn are markers of the growth of the neighborhood in the 1930s. They are also the last two original businesses closest to NE 95th Street.
NE 95th Street is an intersection where businesses died out when the center of the neighborhood’s population and commercial development shifted southward to NE 85th Street. This shift creating a new center of business was due to the influence of the Wedgwood development of Albert Balch.
Even the local church, Morningside Presbyterian, abandoned its original location at 9505 35th Ave NE, present site of Northeast Veterinary Clinic, moved to 8008 35th Ave NE and renamed itself Wedgwood Presbyterian.
Although the names of the stores have changed over the years, there has been a grocery and drugstore at NE 85th Street since the 1950s when developer Albert Balch leased out the properties.
While Joe Shauer’s property at NE 85th Street passed into the hands of another owner in the 1930s, by the 1940s developer Albert Balch acquired ownership of the other three corners of that intersection. Although he was a residential builder and not a business developer, Balch leased out these corners to businesses because he wanted to create a convenient shopping area for Wedgwood residents.
Because of the rapid residential growth of Wedgwood in the 1940s and 1950s and the convenient business district at NE 85th Street, this intersection became the heart of the Wedgwood neighborhood. As of today, there is still a drugstore (Rite-Aid) at the northeast corner of the intersection. At the southeast corner is the shopping center which includes the Wedgwood Broiler restaurant and other stores. The QFC grocery closed in 2021. Now we wait to see if a redevelopment will go ahead, if a new owner purchases the Wedgwood Shopping Center.
Neighborhood pubs
After remodeling in 1996, the Fiddler’s Inn became a no-smoking venue with craft beers and real food.
In the early 1900s “beer parlors” was the Seattle City Directory’s business listing for alcohol establishments. After Prohibition ended in 1934 they were called taverns, and in current times it is common to see the listing of a pub or brewery.
A pub (short for public house) implies that food is served and a wide range of drinks, including craft beers. The concept of a neighborhood pub has become a gathering place, sometimes with a dining room accessible to families and a program of music, trivia nights, sports viewing or karaoke. Wedgwood’s remaining neighborhood pub, the Fiddler’s Inn, advertises its extensive food menus, music and activity programs.
Sources:
Census and Seattle City Directory listings.
Ida’s Inn: There was one other nearby tavern, Ida’s Inn at 7500 35th Ave NE, from 1934 until it closed in 1948. It is not there anymore, so for that reason I have not included Ida’s Inn here in this article about current businesses. My main purpose in this article is to tell background history around the growth of the Wedgwood neighborhood. I have also written a separate article about Dooley’s Tavern which was at 7305 Sand Point Way NE, and which closed in the 1980s.
Interviews with Ruth Shauer Jameson and Gerry Haines Collins (daughters of original owners) in 1993.
Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church, historic records – acquisition of Thorpe property by the Jesuits of Seattle University. See also Seattle University: A Century of Jesuit Education, by Walt Crowley, 1991. 378.79777, Seattle Public Library.
Ownership changes — in 2021 Rob Paulson, owner of the Wedgwood Ale House, sold the business to one of his employees, while retaining ownership of the building itself. Mr. Paulson died of a heart attack on October 9, 2021. In 2022 the property was put up for sale. As of December 2023 the new owner of the building would not renew the lease of the Ale House. The new owner of the building plans to remodel and make other use of the building. At this writing in 2024 it remains to be seen if the Ale House will ever reopen such as at another location.
The Wedgwood Ale House closed on December 28, 2023.
Property records (dates of original buildings), Puget Sound Regional Archives, Bellevue, WA.
Seattle Daily Times, March 17, 1931, page 15, King County paving contract for NE 95th Street awarded to Fiorito Brothers.
Street name of Sand Point Way NE: was created by Ordinance 52478 of February 1927, when the City of Seattle put the road through as a continuous single entity with one name, Sand Point Way NE. City ordinances accessed on the Seattle Municipal Archives page.
Heartbreaking closure of the Ale House in December 2023.
Wedgwood in Seattle History 