Cabin updates and State of the pod
Hello!
I promised you an update when i found out who built the A frame cabins- and I have! A wonderful listener named Allison wrote in and connected me with a document that gave me that answer and a little more. It’s an environmental impact study of the stretch of land between Bremerton and Gorst when they were assessing whether or not to make improvements to state route 3 in the 1990’s. The cottages were called “Terrace Park apartments” at the time. This name hadn’t even crossed my radar!
So, the mysterious figure who built the cabins is a gentleman named “Paul Ford”. He was an engineer by trade and he started building the cabins from local materials he could freely gather, during the Great Depression. He intended to rent them out to make some money, and they were also a project to keep him busy with when there wasn’t any work. He had help from his son, Tom, who was interviewed in 1993 specifically for this study.
There’s a lot of talk about the cabins being eligible to add to the national register of historic places but it obviously never happened if they’re getting torn down. I checked both the national register and state register. Nada. There were originally 11 units but only 9 units were standing when the survey was conducted. Unit G, the largest cabin was disincluded from eligibility because significant changes had been made to that cabin. A-E are now torn down, so that only leaves Cabins F, H I who might be eligible (but, asterisk, that assessment was thirty years ago. It’s possible none of them would qualify now).
There are some old Kitsap sun articles about the Highway proposal where the owner of the cabins at the time says they’d rather see the cabins torn down if the freeway goes in. The mayor is quoted saying there was no public outcry about the cabins. Some of the proposed changes had the cabins being torn down in favor of widening the road, but they escaped destruction because it was slightly cheaper and faster to reroute the highway plan around them than to demolish the cabins. It’s wild to think that in the very same years I was tucked into a church van, rattling down the road, daydreaming about those cabins, they were so very close to destruction because... no one cared about them?
Mr. Ford called the style of his cabins “Northwest A frame” and sought to build the cabins not just in nature but to be part of the natural landscape. He chose the name “Terrace Park” himself, so that’s the name I’ll be using from now on. It turns out that after the Terrace park cabins, he built other A frames on the peninsula. He built an A-framed schoolhouse in Belfair that was called the “chalet school” and a place in Union called the “Robin Hood Lodge”. The chalet school stood from 1936-1971 and was torn down but I found a website for the Robin Hood lodge! There’s a variety of different styles of cabins there but the restaurant building is a dead ringer for the terrace park cabins. I’ll put a link down below in case anyone wants to have a look. I also read that he may have built a cabin in south Kitsap on the water somewhere but was unable to locate or validate that one, possibly because it was a private residence. You know, there are also some A Frame cabins I’ve been to down in Holly- I wonder if those might be related? I tried to use google maps to show you the cabins I’m thinking of but it turns out google maps didn’t feel like taking the street view cameras down that far- they stopped on Seabeck Holly road before you hit holly view. I guess I can’t blame them, Holly is a long, long drive.
Paul Ford went on to work as an engineer in the shipyard during WW2. Afterward, he moved to Bellevue and worked on many other buildings and engineering projects like roads. He spent his last years building fiberglass boats on lake union and passed away in 1955.
There’s tons more to say, it sounds like Paul Ford lived a fascinating life, so if you’d like to read more about him there will be a link to the EIS in the transcript, which includes the interview with his son. I never knew a government document like this one could be so thoughtful- It has the things you would expect like maps and studies on air and water quality, noise pollution and traffic relief- but they also took the time to interview Tom Ford personally about the cabins his father built. There are documents about an archaeological Shell Midden site that must be preserved and correspondence with the Suquamish peoples about the possible impact of the highway on the marine life, and their right to fish granted to them by the treaty of Elliot Point. A lot of love and care went into this.
Lastly, a quick update on the state of the pod. I had a long, dark period over the holidays. I’m still figuring out the best way to organize my time, conduct my research and get my recording done when the house is quiet. Thank you for staying with me as I learn, and I’m optimistic that things will get easier as I settle into a routine. For now, I’m going to stick with a monthly schedule and a Monday release date. I promise you I have been working quietly behind the scenes with my big stack of old books and my big cup of coffee. Haha! Thank you to everyone who has sent me messages and emails. I am so glad to hear that there are other folks out there just as interested in this quirky town as I am!
Bibliography:
Kitsap Sun - Highway 3, Historic Chalets pose a problem - 02/01/1995 - Travis Baker
Kitsap Sun - Along the road to Uncertainty - 10/8/1995 - Travis Baker
Photo of Belfair Chalet School under construction - 1936