Mayor Moran -- A Hundred Years Ago He Rebuilt A City, Then Started From The Ground Up On A Resort Called Rosario
CUTLINE: FULFILLING HIS CONSTANT NEED TO BE ACTIVE, MORAN BUILT HIS YACHT, THE SAN WAN, ON HIS FRONT LAWN. IT WAS RARELY SAILED.
CUTLINE: AMONG HIS MANY TALENTS, MORAN ALSO WAS A PHOTOGRAPHER. THIS FAMILY SNAPSHOT WAS PRINTED FROM A GLASS NEGATIVE HE TOOK AND PROCESSED IN 1911. MORAN RELATIVES ARE, FROM LEFT, WILLIAM, JEAN, ANNIE AND LOUISE.
Seattle had a new mayor, one who was entering the office while the city was in the midst of one of the most dramatic building booms in its history, with tall buildings sprouting up right and left. Topping that, the city was becoming attractive to folks nationwide who couldn't wait to nest on its scenic hills and enjoy all its advantages.
Sound familiar? The major difference between that description and today happens to be an entire century.
It was 100 years ago that Robert Moran, Seattle's young and enthusiastic mayor, destined to become one of the area's legends, faced a major problem: Seattle had burned nearly to the ground June 6, 1889, leaving him with plenty to consider upon his election to a second term in 1890.
When the fire finally was brought under control, 30 blocks of the city were left smoldering after a series of almost comic-opera scenes in attempting to control the blaze. When the fire started because of an overturned glue pot in a machine shop, the city's two fire engines attempted to pump water from the bay,
only to find that the tide had gone out and their hoses couldn't reach the salt water.
This bumbling about during the fire was not lost on Moran. In his first term as mayor he already had shown the style that would forge his later career as an enormously successful shipbuilder, engineer and creator of a sprawling estate in the San Juan Islands. During that first term, from 1888 to 1890, he had fought for public ownership of the water system. The city council and other interests in Seattle tried to convince him that it was too expensive. But the fire and devastation of Seattle more than convinced the population, which voted 97 percent for the new water-power and sewage system.
Moran spent much of his second term as mayor, from 1890 to 1892, overseeing the rebuilding of the city. Much of Pioneer Square including the Pioneer Building and what is known today as the Grand Central Building were built during that period. Seattle's population doubled within six months of the fire. Many of the new folks flooding into town came from California and the East Coast.
The fire also destroyed Moran's once-prospering machine shop. In partnership with his brothers, he began to rebuild what was to become the nationally famed Moran Brothers Co. in what is now the Kingdome area. With Seattle well on its way to recovery, Moran seemed to lose interest in city politics and turned instead to putting the Moran Brothers Co. on the map. By the 1890s they were winning important government contracts, including one to build a Navy torpedo boat (a first for Seattle) and a Coast Guard boarding boat called the Golden Gate. Seattleites frequently flocked to the waterfront to watch the Moran Brothers launch yet another ship into the waters of Elliott Bay.
The crowning achievement of the Moran Brothers was the battleship USS Nebraska. Moran recalled in his
writings that the idea of ``the sawmill town of Seattle'' building a major battleship was something of a joke to the Navy. But win the contract they did. And it was to be one of the biggest events in Seattle's history, with parades and celebrations at the keel laying July 4, 1902, and the launching Oct. 7, 1904. The ship, one of the largest and well-built of its class (and costing nearly $4 million), cruised around the world with the Great White Fleet and later served in World War I as a training ship.
``The building of the Nebraska had become a Seattle institution,'' writes Christopher Peacock in a history of Robert Moran he wrote in 1985.
Moran, by then a wealthy man, had come a long way since the November day in 1875 when he stepped off a boat on Seattle's waterfront with a dime in his pocket and had to ask for credit for his first meal. But the heavy strain of running the city and major shipbuilding had taken its toll both physically and mentally. Consulting with both European and American doctors, he was told to retire (he was 49 at the time) as he had only about six months to live! Doctors apparently thought he had serious heart disease.
``In 1904 the doctor had issued me a ticket for a permanent residence in Lakeview Cemetery,'' he wrote years later. He had proved the doctors wrong.
But Moran did dispose of the Seattle ship-building property and retire to the San Juan Islands, where he bought 7,800 acres of choice property. What was to occupy Moran for the next three decades was a project that became not only the most lasting monument to his talents, but was to forever alter the map of Orcas Island. Many called it Moran's ``Shangrila'' and ``the showplace of the San Juans.'' In 1906 Moran began construction on the mansion that he was to call Rosario from the Spanish name for the strait that separates the islands from the mainland.
``Robert Moran approached the development of Rosario with the same thoroughness and zeal he had applied to his business,'' writes Peacock in the history of Rosario. ``Constructing his home was a labor of love for good craftsmanship, by a man who was accustomed to building ships that could withstand the worst the Pacific Ocean had to offer. Everything was built massively, and with no expense spared in making Rosario one of the most substantial homes on the Pacific Coast.''
``Building Rosario was simply a continuance of my life-long urge to be continually pushing ahead on industrial construction work,'' said Moran.
He designed the rambling 54-room, five-level home and then employed the finest craftsmen he could assemble to do the work. Rooms are paneled in East Indian teak and Honduran mahogany brought by boat and then seasoned. Even the hinges, door fasteners and hardware, designed by Moran, were cast in bronze at a machine shop on the property. Far ahead of his time, Moran also built his own hydroelectric power system, which supplied electricity and heating for the home. Rosario became one of the earliest homes anywhere to be electrically heated and, in fact, more than 80 years later the same private system heats the mansion-turned-resort.
Besides the 18 bedrooms, dining rooms, grand living room and dens, Rosario also featured a heated swimming pool in the basement, bowling alley, billiard room and an attic that could accommodate 50 guests on cots. Ever restless, Moran turned
from the house to building a 132-foot yacht on the property. Once launched, the San Wan, as he named it, was used a few times and then left at anchor in the harbor. The fun, apparently, was in the building, not in the use.
Now that he was a permanent San Juan Islands resident, Moran frequently invited his Seattle friends for weekends, often 50 and 100 at a time. But guests found the place was run like a ship, with Moran insisting meal times be formal and precise. He always wore a suit and tie, even when pursuing outdoor activities.
Moran's special pride was the handsome, soaring music room at Rosario, which contains, among other items, a 26-rank Aeolian pipe organ made in Germany with 1,972 pipes. It is here that Moran would often wake up his guests sharply at 7 a.m. daily with a resounding rendition of ``Work for the Night is Coming.'' A balcony above the music room contained the keyboard for the organ and Moran's private library, which held volumes on both engineering and medicine (he decided to learn everything he could about medicine after being told he had only six months to live).
As Moran grew older, he decided to sell Rosario. He had already deeded acreage to the state for what became Moran State Park and includes Mount Constitution, lakes, etc. His wife Melissa died in 1930 and his children had their own careers (son Frank, for example, founded Lakeside School in Seattle). How does one advertise such an estate? In Moran's case, in a most elaborate way. For one thing, he published a book on the place, illustrated with photos by the legendary Ashael Curtis. He also took out an ad in National Geographic Magazine and, when all that failed, in 1937 wrote a letter to The Seattle Times dated July 4, 1937:
``I am now in my 81st year,'' he wrote. ``I'm offering Rosario for sale to simplify the settlement of my estate when I am no longer here to give it my personal attention . . . ''
Robert Moran sold Rosario to a wealthy California businessman and his wife, Donald and Alice Rheem, in 1938. He moved to a more modest beach home on the island, where he died March 27, 1943, at the age of 86.
Rosario has been in the hands of several owners since, most notably Gil Geiser, former mayor of Mountlake Terrace, who turned it into a resort in 1960. Geiser's widow, Sarah, owns and operates the place today. But with nightly concerts on the pipe organ, flashing lantern slides on the screen in the music room and the remarkable ship-like interior of the mansion, the spirit of Robert Moran is very much alive at Rosario.
TOM STOCKLEY, A FORMER PACIFIC STAFFER, IS NOW A FREE-LANCE WRITER AND SEATTLE TIMES WINE COLUMNIST. WILLIAM DUNCAN IS A KIRKLAND FREE-LANCE PHOTOGRAPHER.