In the past twenty years we have seen a complete transformation of Stone Way in Seattle from a light-industrial area to an avenue of modern apartment buildings, coffee shops and storefronts.

There are still a few old buildings like the original Coast Carton Company at 4133 Stone Way.  Coast Carton was built as a box factory in 1912, one of the earliest industrial buildings on Stone Way.  The building now has two retail storefronts.

Coast Carton Company photo of 1938.

Coast Carton Company founded by the Norie & Kaye families

In 1906 James L. Norie of Pennsylvania traveled with his father-in-law, Joseph Kaye, to explore the timber resources of the State of Washington.  They had read newspaper accounts that major timber companies such as Weyerhaeuser and Laird-Norton had left Minnesota and moved to Washington in search of new forests of trees.  Joseph Kaye was also in the lumber business and wanted to try to find a new supply.  He bought a lumber mill in Pilchuck, near Arlington in Snohomish County, about 50 miles north of Seattle.

4133-4135 Stone Way, former Coast Carton building, as it looks today.

A few years later, J.L. Norie brought his family to the Pacific Northwest and operated a lumber mill in Sedro-Woolley, Skagit County.

Next, the Norie family moved to Seattle. Instead of working directly with timber, in 1912 J.L. Norie set up a secondary business: the making of paper boxes from softwood trees such as pine and fir.  Norie built the Coast Carton box factory at 4133 Stone Way (southwest corner of North 42nd Street.)

All of James Norie’s family, his parents and siblings, moved to the Pacific Northwest as did those of his wife Martha Kaye Norie.  James & Martha’s son worked at Coast Carton as did a number of other relatives, including nieces and nephews.

James Norie outlived two wives and continue to manage the box factory until he was in his seventies, in the 1950s.

In 1964 at age 86, James Norie attended a reunion at the old ghost-town of Pilchuck, Snohomish County.  He took sick and died in Seattle, two weeks after the Pilchuck reunion.

Sources:

One of the storefronts at 4135 Stone Way

Plat names:  the notation “Elder’s Orchard” on the old photo of Coast Carton, is part of the legal description of the property.  The building is in the plat filed by Sidney S. Elder, a Fremont businessman.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 8, 1937, page 19:  J.L. Norie’s first wife, Martha, was killed in a car wreck.

Seattle Daily Times, October 25, 1964, page 98: Lucile MacDonald column about Pilchuck, a vanished town in Snohomish County.

Street name:  Corliss P. Stone is the namesake of these streets which were in property he platted for development.