Naval Reserve Building (Armory)

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Before Euro-American settlement, this area was a trade landing for tribal peoples. In the 1870s coal barges from Newcastle were docked here and the coal was then transferred by rail to vessels at Elliott Bay.

In 1882, David Denny built a major sawmill, the Western Mill, at the foot of Westlake and partially extending out over Lake Union. An asphalt plant was later located nearby. Logs were floated from Lake Washington via a larger sluiceway dug at Montlake in 1883. That same year, Seattle annexed the area around the lake's southern shores.

J. S. Brace and Frank Hergert leased Western Mill in 1895, then in 1899 purchased the mill outright. In 1909 the main mill burned. Brace and Hergert rebuilt a much larger mill north of Valley Street, driving 100-foot pilings into the lake and placing fill along the lakeshore to support construction.

In 1887 the Seattle Steam Laundry opened nearby, and thereafter every day was laundry day in South Lake Union. In time commercial laundries became a mainstay of the South Lake Union and Cascade neighborhoods as the Troy Laundry, Supply Laundry, Prim Laundry, Overall Laundry, and New Richmond Laundry and many others all profited from the Sisyphean task of keeping early Seattleites relatively clean.

The Art Deco-style Naval Reserve Center, designed by B. Marcus Priteca and William R. Grant as an armory for the United State Navy, was built on the site of the Western Mill. It was dedicated in June 1942. During World War II this facility housed a training school. The building featured a "wet-trainer" room (a watertight room that could be filled with water so that sailors could practice evacuating a flooded ship's compartment), a full-scale ship's bridge, a chart room, a radio room, a combat information center, a rifle range, and a two-story gymnasium. After the war ended it became the local headquarters for the United States Naval Reserve, which deeded the building and its five-acre parcel to the Seattle Parks Department in 2000.

In 2011 the Naval Reserve Building becomes the new home for MOHAI -- the Museum of History & Industry.

By Paula Becker, September 25, 2012

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U.S. Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Building (B. Marcus Priteca and William R. Grant, 1940), Lake Union, Seattle, ca. 1946
Courtesy Mimi Sheridan