Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle. Map courtesy of HistoryLink.

During World War Two from 1941 to 1945, Americans put their personal plans on hold so that they could serve in the military, work in war production industries or in support services.  After the end of World War Two the focus of American life turned from supporting the war effort to pursuing dreams of home and family which had been deferred during the war.  There was pent-up demand for houses and for consumer goods which had not been produced for civilian use during the war.

The Wedgwood neighborhood, including its name and its identity, was a creation of this post-World-War-Two pressure for housing for young married couples.  There still were large tracts of vacant land in northeast Seattle which developers like Albert Balch, the father of Wedgwood, used to create more single-family housing.

The creation of the new Wedgwood housing development in the 1940s led to the growth of an adjacent business district, centered at or near the NE 85th Street intersection along the arterial 35th Ave NE.  This blog article will tell about the Copestick building at 8613 35th Ave NE and how it was affected by the growth of Wedgwood, most especially the pressures of the arterial 35th Ave NE.

Becoming Wedgwood in the 1940s and 1950s

Young married couples loved the affordable homes built by Balch in the new Wedgwood development in the 1940s.  The first Wedgwood plat was from NE 80th to 85th Streets on the west side of 35th Ave NE.

The Wedgwood neighborhood took on its identity in the period of rapid growth in the post-war years of the 1940s and 1950s, when large numbers of young couples got married and started new lives with their own homes.

As of the 1940s there was an incredible amount of vacant land still available in northeast Seattle which became areas of new housing.  Developer Albert Balch’s first tract of Wedgwood houses (a plat name) was on the west side of 35th Ave NE from NE 80th to 85th Streets.  The new Wedgwood plat of houses was so popular that local businesses wanted to identify with it, and so the Wedgwood development gradually gave its name to the neighborhood.

Businesses were attracted to the growing Wedgwood neighborhood with its potential customers, the young couples in Balch houses.  In addition to building Wedgwood houses on both sides of 35th Ave NE, Albert Balch acquired properties at the NE 85th Street intersection and reserved these for business use.  Businesses began to be established at the major commercial intersection of NE 85^th Street and nearby blocks along 35^th Ave NE.  Some of the 1940s businesses were oriented to new homeowners, such as hardware, electrical & plumbing, paint stores, appliance stores, and garden/landscaping supplies.

Wedgwoodians want their commercial district to have a variety of locally-owned shops.

Growth of the business district in the new Wedgwood neighborhood

It’s easy to have a nice day in the charming Wedgwood business district.  The Ale House is the descendant of the original Hansen’s Tavern.

Except for Hansen’s Tavern at 8515 35^th Ave NE, as of the 1940s there still were no buildings at the corners of the intersection of NE 85^th Street on 35^th Ave NE, which today is the heart of the commercial district of Wedgwood.  In the post-war period other businesses came in to serve the growing residential population of Wedgwood.

The first post-war commercial building to be completed in what would become Wedgwood’s business district at NE 85^th Street, was a new storefront building which enclosed the old Hansen’s Tavern.  In 1945 that tavern became the first business to take on the name which became the name of the neighborhood, “Wedgwood.”

The first store in the new building adjacent to the Wedgwood Tavern was McVicar & Son Hardware.  Like the McVicars who were residents of northeast Seattle, in the 1940s and 1950s many other local people began to open stores, gas stations and various businesses in the new commercial district near the intersection of NE 85^th Street.

The Copestick Building at 8611-13 35^th Ave NE

The NE 86th Street corner site had an electrical substation and a Mobil gas station in 1950. Seattle Municipal Archives Item #21028.

Paul Copestick was a northeast Seattle resident who decided to build a new storefront building in the growing Wedgwood commercial district in 1956.  At that time there was a Mobil gas station, Miller & McInnis, at 8605 35^th Ave NE on the northwest corner of NE 86^th Street.

Paul Copestick chose his new storefront location, 8611-13 35th Ave NE, to be located next to/on the north side of the Miller & McInnis gas station.   Today the corner of the former gas station site is open space which is on-hold to be developed as a pocket park.

Paul Copestick was born in Minnesota and came to Seattle as a young man with his parents.  After Paul married a local girl, Mabel, in 1915, the couple lived in the University District of Seattle close to their network of family members.  Members of the family gradually migrated to northeast Seattle where Paul and Mabel lived for many years at 7302 34^th Ave NE (the house is gone now).

The Adams Insurance Agency has been at 8613 35th Ave NE in Wedgwood since 1956.

Paul and Mabel had a daughter, Elsie, who married C.F. Stockton and lived at 8901 32^nd Ave NE in the Wedgwood neighborhood.

C.F. Stockton was a contractor who built his father-in-law’s new storefronts at 8611-13 35^th Ave NE, a fact mentioned by the Wedgwood Echo community newsletter in their March 1957 article about the expansion of the Copestick building, with pride in the activities of neighborhood residents and business owners.

Paul Copestick worked as a U.S. Customs Inspector for 26 years and it was not until after he retired in 1955 that he decided to build a storefront on 35^th Ave NE as a business investment.

Paul Copestick’s building was built in two phases, 1956-1957, and even today the differences between the two conjoined sections can be seen.  At first, in 1956, there was a two-office building which had Russell’s Barber Shop and the Walt Adams Insurance agency.   Today this two-office space at the south end of the building has an accountant’s office and the Walt Adams Insurance agency at 8613 35th Ave NE.

The photo below shows the original two-office-space building.  The name Earl J. McLaughlin on the photo, is the plat name as part of the legal description.  The photo was taken by the King County Property Tax Assessor.

The first section of the Copestick building had just two office spaces, occupied by Russell’s Barber Shop and the Walt Adams Insurance agency. The writing on the photo is the legal description of the plat name of Earl J. McLaughlin’s. Photo courtesy of the Puget Sound Regional Archives.

The Copestick building expands into another section in 1957

After the first section which was completed in 1956, Paul Copestick expanded the building northward with more storefronts.  The first tenant of the northern portion of the building built in 1957 was an electrical & heating contractor.  In Wedgwood’s growing years of the 1940s-1950s there were more of these types of home-supply and home-improvement stores including McVicar Hardware at 8507 35th Ave NE, a paint store at 8500 35^th Ave NE and an appliance store in the 7300 block of 35^th Ave NE.

As of 1957 the northern half of Paul Copestick’s building had Jenny Oakvik’s Wedgwood Cafe, a cleaners, and the electrical & heating contractor.   Today this building has Café Javasti, a hair salon, and the Wedgwood Laundromat.

The Copestick building as of 1957 had Russell’s Barber Shop, Walt Adams Insurance, Jenny Oakvik’s Wedgwood Cafe, a cleaners and a heating & electrical contractor. Photo courtesy of the Puget Sound Regional Archives, repository of the property records of King County.

Annexation, growth, and City of Seattle regulations

Paul Copestick’s building was in the northern part of the Wedgwood neighborhood (north of NE 85^th Street) which did not come into the boundaries of the City of Seattle until 1953.  The final phase of annexation of north Seattle neighborhoods was completed in 1954 when the north city boundary line was set at NE 145th Street, as it is today.

The northernmost section of the Copestick building today has a hair salon and a laundromat.

Mr. Copestick may have thought that everything was “finished” as of annexation of most of Wedgwood in 1953, including street work on the arterial 35^th Ave NE, but after his building was built in 1956-1957, later City regulations and street work began to affect his building again.

Mr. Copestick disputed the City of Seattle regulations about business signage and he filed an appeal which he ultimately won.  He also protested the further widening of 35^th Ave NE, which would cut into his property in front of his building.

Mr. Copestick won the first round, which was a dispute with the City of Seattle Planning Commission about whether a blade sign for Jenny Oakvik’s Wedgwood Café stuck out too far over the sidewalk and street.  The exasperated chairman of the commission, James J. Chiarelli, an architect, said that since Mr. Copestick INSISTED that his building was the required number of feet set back from the street, that they would OK the business signage.  City Councilman Clarence F. Massart, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, signed off on the decision.

But little did Mr. Copestick realize that over the years, there would be more street work and improvements to 35^th Ave NE which would continue to eat into his business frontage.

The summer of 1968: the widening of 35th Ave NE

In the summer of 1968 I (Valarie) was sixteen years old and I was learning to drive.  I well remember the change in the driving conditions in the Wedgwood commercial district in the year 1968 when 35^th Ave NE was widened to four lanes.

Grant McVicar was a business and community leader in Wedgwood’s formative years.

Prior to 1968, 35^th Ave NE was a two-lane arterial with angle-in parking in front of some of the stores.  When I interviewed Grant McVicar in 1992, he told me some funny stories about the angle-in parking, though it was not humorous to him at the time that the events happened in the 1950s.

Mr. McVicar told me that more than once, some drivers put their car into “drive” instead of reverse to get out of the angle-in parking spaces, and their cars slammed into the wall of the McVicar Hardware Store at 8507 35^th Ave NE.  Mr. McVicar implied that these incidents occurred late at night when patrons were leaving the Wedgwood Tavern, next-door to McVicar’s.

The widening of the arterial 35th Ave NE in 1968 was done to ease traffic flow and to eliminate the hazards of angle-in parking, for which cars had to back out into the lanes of oncoming traffic.  Some Wedgwood merchants squawked at the 1968 change in the roadway plan because curbside parking spaces would be fewer than the former angle-in parking.

Mr. Copestick also objected to the taking of more of the frontage of his building in order to widen the street in 1968, but this time his objections were overruled.  City of Seattle engineers stated that “private real estate developers who laid out lots when the section was outside the city, failed to make adequate allowance for future street improvements.”

Changes in the roadway continue to affect the Wedgwood business district today

Cafe Javasti is so successful that it has expanded into two spaces in the Copestick Building.

In the year 2018 a major Wedgwood neighborhood controversy erupted due to the City of Seattle’s latest plan to reconfigure the lanes on 35^th Ave NE.  The plan called for the elimination of all curbside parking in the heart of the Wedgwood business district, in order to create enough lane space for a center turn lane and for a bike lane.  This was the most recent traffic plan along the road of 35th Ave NE in its evolution over the years, which has affected the business district.

In March 2019 the City of Seattle announced their decision on what would be done on 35th Ave NE in the Wedgwood business corridor.  The City had sponsored a mediation process between opposing citizen groups, one pro-bike-lanes and one group against having bike lanes on 35th Ave NE and against the elimination of the curbside parking.  The final decision by the Mayor of Seattle was a compromise plan which did allow for a bike lane but not a protective barrier.

Red posters for “Save 35th” indicated opposition to having bike lanes on the arterial 35th Ave NE in Wedgwood.

The City’s decision, announced in March 2019, was to reduce 35th Ave NE to one lane of traffic in each direction, with a center turn lane.  To create this number of lanes, parking was restricted to one side of 35th Ave NE only.

While having parking available on one side of 35th Ave NE is better than no curbside parking at all, it still was of concern to Wedgwood businesses who thought that their customers would be inconvenienced by not being able to park right in front of some stores and businesses.

It remains to be seen how this latest roadway/land modification plan will affect the businesses on 35th Ave NE  such as the ones currently in the Copestick building.  Another issue is whether the newly created bike lane on 35th Ave NE is adequate.  Users of the bike lane are dissatisfied because of the lack of a protective barrier along the lane to separate bikes from cars.

In addition to expansion of their building, in 2019 University Unitarian Church also expanded their parking lot at the south end of the building.  The church now occupies that entire block except for an apartment building on the corner of NE 65th Street.

One response to the City’s proposed elimination of parking along 35th Ave NE, was that of University Unitarian Church, located on the arterial at the southeast corner of NE 68th Street.  UUC stated that the City’s plan to eliminate curbside parking on 35^th Ave NE would be a problem for their attendees.

Along with plans for interior renovations and expansion of their church building in 2018-2019, UUC constructed a larger off-street parking lot at the south end of their building.  In this way UUC planned to compensate for the loss of curbside parking on 35th Ave NE due to the traffic revisions.

Sources:

“An ordinance relating to the engineering department, authorizing the acquisition of property necessary for the 35^th Avenue Northeast Widening Project.” Council Bill Number 88038, Ordinance Number 96507, March 1968.  Seattle Municipal Archives, Legislative Records.

“Appeal of Paul W. Copestick from decision of Board of Adjustment on a variance application,” City of Seattle Comptroller File 241694, January 1961.  On microfiche at the Seattle Municipal Archives, Seattle City Hall.

Census and City Directory Listings, Seattle Public Library genealogy resources.

Paul and Mabel Copestick celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in October 1965.

Copestick name:  the website surnamedb.com tells that the name Copestick means cut + stick, an occupational name for a woodcutter.  The name can be traced in records back to before the year 1300 in England.

“Copestick fiftieth wedding anniversary,” Seattle Times, October 7, 1965, page 56.

Earl J. McLaughlin:  The Copestick building is in the plat of Earl J. McLaughlin, the name of an early real estate developer.  The plat name is part of the legal description of the Copestick building property along with the street address.

Property record cards and photos:  Puget Sound Regional Archives, Bellevue, WA, repository of the property records of King County.

“Seattle church to replace homeless housing with parking spots,” by Scott Greenstone, Seattle Times, November 15, 2017; renovation info posted on the University Unitarian Church webpage.

“Wedgwood Electric,” Wedgwood Echo community newsletter, April 1957, pages 1 and 7.

“Wedgwood Square Shopping Center to Gain New Merchants,” Wedgwood Echo community newsletter, March 19, 1957, page 1 (see below).