Frederick William Anhalt (March 3, 1896 – July 17, 1996) was a builder and contractor who constructed many distinguished

rental Renting, also known as hiring or letting, is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for al ...

apartment buildings in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

in the 1920s and early 1930s. In 1993, the Seattle Chapter of the

American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...

(AIA) awarded Anhalt an honorary membership in recognition of excellence in residential design. In 2001, The

Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington st ...

listed Anhalt as one of the 150 most influential people in Seattle History His buildings have been referred to as "Castles in Seattle." Anhalt designed and constructed more than 40 buildings in Seattle between 1925 and 1942. Anhalt's designs reflect

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

, Tudor, and Spanish Mission architectural influences, and incorporate both architectural flourishes and modern construction techniques that were uncommon in mainstream residential architectural projects of the pre-war period. Three of Anhalt's buildings are listed as Seattle Historic Landmarks.Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, Individual Landmarks: Greater Capitol Hill:
/ref> Three other Anhalt buildings are part of the Harvard-Belmont Historic District in Seattle's

Capitol Hill Capitol Hill, in addition to being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues. It is one of the ...

neighborhood.

Early career

Fred Anhalt moved to Seattle from the midwest in the early 1920s. After working as a grocer and appliance salesman, Anhalt and partner Jerome B. Hardcastle, a former butcher, founded the Western Building & Leasing Company in 1925 in order to build small commercial buildings, primarily markets, in Seattle's outlying neighborhoods such as Ballard, Greenwood, Beacon Hill, West Seattle, and North Queen Anne Hill. Anhalt's company soon branched out from commercial buildings and began to design and build

bungalow A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is either single-story or has a second story built into a sloping roof (usually with dormer windows), and may be surrounded by wide verandas. The first house in England that was classified as a b ...

-style houses and

Bungalow court A bungalow court is a style of multi-family housing which features several small houses arranged around a central garden. The bungalow court was created in Pasadena, California in 1909 and was the predominant form of multi-family housing in South ...

apartment buildings. Although Western Building & Leasing initially relied primarily on external architects and contractors to construct their buildings, by 1927 Anhalt began to take a more direct role, despite having no formal training as an architect. Anhalt would often work late in his home office, sketching designs for a new project at his drafting table. The next morning, Anhalt would hand the sketches off to Seattle architect Mark Borchert, to his frequent collaborator, architect William Whitely, or to his own

draftsmen A drafter (also draughtsman / draughtswoman in British and Commonwealth English, draftsman / draftswoman or drafting technician in American and Canadian English) is an engineering technician who makes detailed technical drawings or plans for ...

Edwin Dofson and Bjarne Moe, for further refinement. In 1928, Anhalt bought out Hardcastle and founded Anhalt and Borchert, Designers and Builders, with Borchert.

Anhalt apartments

A growing interest in classic European architectural styles led Anhalt to begin sketching concepts for larger and more sophisticated apartment building designs, incorporating elements drawn from architectural pattern books such as Samuel Skidmore's ''Tudor Homes of England''. Many of these new, multi-story buildings incorporated Tudor and Norman elements, such as

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stained-glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

windows, and spiral staircases. Others drew on the Spanish Mission style in their use of clay roof tiles and faux-adobe stucco with ceramic inlays. In contrast with Anhalt's earlier bungalows, which were similar in style to other residential buildings of the period, the multi-story apartment buildings that Anhalt built during the late 1920s and early 1930s possess many custom touches, luxury amenities, and distinctive architectural features. These buildings were designed to provide members of the growing middle class with compelling alternatives to single family homes at a time when many central Seattle neighborhoods were becoming increasingly urbanized. Most Anhalt apartments, especially those he built in Seattle's

and Queen Anne neighborhoods such as ''Anhalt Arms'' (formerly ''Berkeley Court''), feature landscaped interior courtyards. These courtyards, which are shaded and recessed from the street, provide a semi-private, outdoor common space for residents. Unlike many apartments built during the pre-war era, many Anhalt Apartments also possess both a front and a back door. The front door faced inwards, either onto a small alcove or landing shared with one to three other apartments, or directly onto the interior courtyard. These design decisions were intended to foster both a sense of privacy for individual tenants, and a sense of community within the building as a whole. Despite broad stylistic similarities, Anhalt apartments have been recognized for the degree to which each building is customized to its particular building site. The basic plan—individual living spaces oriented around a common, open courtyard—made it easier to make effective use of the

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and existing vegetation on the building site. This floor plan also provided flexibility for minimizing street noise and maximizing privacy even in neighborhoods with high

urban density Urban density is a term used in urban planning and urban design to refer to the number of people inhabiting a given urbanized area. As such it is to be distinguished from other measures of population density. Urban density is considered an importan ...

. The interiors of Anhalt apartments feature amenities and design details that were uncommon in apartments of the time. Many Anhalt apartments featured built-in refrigerators, electric dish washers, wood-burning fireplaces, high ceilings, hand-carved woodwork, and double floors for soundproofing. Although individual apartments were not exceptionally large, many featured individualized floor plans and amenities more commonly found in single-family homes: upper and lower levels connected by curved interior staircases, private balconies, glazed tile work, and stained-glass window panes. The 25-unit Ten-O-Five apartment building, completed in 1930, was the first apartment building in Seattle to feature an underground parking garage. Lawrence Kreisman, in his booklet, ''Apartments by Anhalt'', says:

"What made Anhalt's buildings succeed is not their particular style or size, or complexity. It is the style of living encouraged therein -- the creation, through design, of an enclosed community that, while it relates to the street and neighborhood, also provides a common green, an outdoor living room that is the sole province of the tenants."

Anhalt Apartments have been recognized both for their high build quality and for the speed with which they were constructed. Anhalt's company often completed construction of a building within fewer than three months, and usually constructed several buildings simultaneously. Anhalt achieved this balance through vertical integration and by taking advantages of efficiencies of scale—by centralizing design and construction within the same firm, and placing large orders with local suppliers of brick, tile and other building materials.

Late career and legacy

Due to the rapid pace of construction and the increasing scale of his apartment projects, Anhalt found himself over-

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during the early years of the

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, as demand for new middle-class housing waned. Unable to secure the capital necessary to pay his debts, the Anhalt Company declared bankruptcy in 1934. He continued to design smaller scale projects, including the original chapel at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, in Seattle's Laurelhurst neighborhood. He ultimately left the field in 1942 to open a Shur-Gro Nursery, which won a special award for

landscape design Landscape design is an independent profession and a design and art tradition, practiced by landscape designers, combining nature and culture. In contemporary practice, landscape design bridges the space between landscape architecture and garde ...

from the Seattle chapter of the

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in 1954. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Anhalt continued to occasionally provide landscape designs for various building projects in Seattle, including the Copenhagen (now Bonneville) apartments.

Buildings in Seattle

* 1005 Apartments - 1005 East Roy Street * Anhalt Apartments - 1600 E John Street * Anhalt Arms (formerly Berkeley Court) - 1405 E John Street *Anhalt Hall - 711 NE 43rd Street * Belmont Court - 750 Belmont Avenue East * Belmont Place - 710 Belmont Place East * Borchert Company Apartment Building - 417 Harvard Avenue East * Oak Manor - 730 Belmont Avenue East * Tudor Manor - 111 14th Ave East * La Quinta Apartments - 1710 E Denny Way * East Roy Street - 1014 East Roy Street * Twin Gables - 1516 E Republican Street * Barcelona Court - 2205 Bigelow Avenue North * Franco Villa - 1108 9th Ave West * Anhalt Condos - 1201 E. John Street * Anhalt Capecod 4516 37th Avenue Northeast *One of the buildings of the Lake Court complex - 2012 43rd Ave. E.

References

External links