John B. Agen (1856-1920) was a Seattle businessman who dominated the dairy products industry in Seattle from 1890 to 1916. He did not live in the Fremont neighborhood, but a three-block section of property came to be owned by Agen by way of B.F. Day. B.F. Day was an early resident of Fremont who was a community activist and who donated land for building the present B.F. Day School.
Like many people in Seattle, B.F. Day was badly affected by the economic crash known as the Panic of 1893. In a court case ten years later, Mr. Day was questioned as the whether he was hiding any money or assets such as real estate. He explained that during the 1890s some of the land he had owned, had been transferred into the names of other people so that Day would not lose the property. One of the people who helped B.F. Day at that time was John B. Agen. Agen later filed this plat map for the property in the 4100 block between Woodland Park Ave to Stone Way.
John B. Agen (1856-1920)
John B. Agen helped B.F. Day financially during the 1890s with the expectation that Agen would recover the money later, when the economy improved, by platting the land into house lots.
John B. Agen had been a successful dairy production businessman in Iowa with his own creamery and cold storage plant. At age 33 in 1889, he decided to see whether he might expand his business to Seattle.
Agen arrived just days after Seattle’s Great Fire of June 6, 1889. At first, because of his network of suppliers and storage in Iowa, he was able to bring products from there to Seattle, until he set up local contacts and networks of dairy farmers.
Agen gained the title of “Father of the Dairy Industry of the Pacific Northwest.” He became enormously successful because of his manufacture of tinned butter and evaporated milk which was carried by miners to the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897. Agen also established stores in Dawson, Valdez. Nome and Skagway.
Joh B. Agen store at 820 Western Avenue in 1897, with goods piled on the sidewalk for those shopping for supplies for the Klondike Gold Rush. Photo courtesy of UW Special Collections.
In 1902 Agen built Pier 57 at the foot of University Street at the Seattle waterfront, which gave him the advantage of direct unloading of stock into cold storage. In 1910 he built a warehouse at 1201 Western Avenue (northwest corner of Seneca Street).
John B. Agen’s warehouse at 1201 Western Avenue is part of the historic waterfront district of Seattle. Photo courtesy of Joe Mabel, Wikipedia.
Agen went through all the highs and lows of life in Seattle. He was a successful businessman, but he experienced the death of his first wife, Catherine, age 30, in 1894. She left behind the Agen’s seven-year-old son, John Stuart Agen.
John Agen Sr. remarried in the year 1900, a young woman who, like himself, had Irish immigrant parents. John & Florence Agen had three children together.
Approaching age 60 in 1916, John Agen began selling his businesses and he then lived on income from investments such as land sales from plats like the one in Fremont, which he filed in 1919.
Agen died of pneumonia in 1920 at age 64. His widow Florence & her children spent the rest of their lives in Seattle where they were active contributors to the community. John Agen’s eldest son John Stuart Agen whose mother was Catherine, was well-known in Seattle as a real estate dealer.
Sources:
Pier 57 was built by John B. Agen and today is Miner’s Landing, the site of the Great Wheel.
The life of B.F. Day in Fremont.
Genealogical & City Directory listings.
HistoryLink Essay #22753, “Pier 57, Seattle,” by Kit Oldham, 2023.
Plat map from the King County Parcel Viewer.
Wikipedia essay: John B. Agen’s warehouse at 1201 Western Avenue in Seattle.
