This is the house “built by William O. Robison” (according to family lore) at 4220 Greenwood Avenue, in Fremont, Seattle. According to Sally Victor (William O.’s wife), it was their family’s first and only permanent residence in Seattle. William O. died here in 1917; his widow stayed on in the house till she died in 1927.
Vern estimated the date of this photo as 1908 in the album he created reproducing family pictures, and the contemporary real-estate website Zillo lists the property (which is still standing) as having been built in 1910. In both cases this dating is almost certainly wrong.
William O. Robison is the left-most person in this and the other photo, below, taken at the same time. We know that he broke the tibia and fibula of his left leg on February 14, 1906, and walked with canes and crutches ever after. He would have been in no shape to build a house after that date or even to put all his weight on his left leg, as he is doing in this picture.
The boy holding the cart in the middle of one photo (and sitting on the left on the stairs, in the other) is Charlie Victor Robison. Charlie was born in November 1895. How old does he look in these pictures? Surely not older than 10, which would place the date at 1905 or earlier.
Sally Victor Robison claimed that 4220 Greenwood “was their first place of residence” after arriving in Seattle in 1901, and that they spent only their summers down at Jenkin’s Prairie between Kent and Black Diamond and then making a go at a “ranch” in Maltby for two years (1904-1906) before returning to Greenwood Avenue.
The house in this picture looks newly-built. The embankment to the street is still held up by pilings; there are no plants and no grass growing around the place. There seems to be some lumber next to the house. The completion of the house might well have been the occasion for the picture. I can’t (yet) identify the other men, women, and children in this picture, but the taller, more robust fellow could well be Ernest. He was trained as a carpenter but worked for a time as drayer. He looks like a drayer! (Click on these pictures to enlarge them.)
My guess is that this house at 4220 Greenwood was built by William O. and his son Ernest, possibly assisted by William S. and others, sometime between August 1901, when the family arrived in Freemont from Carthage, Missouri, and 1903, when at least some of them — William O., Sally, and Charlie — left for a two-year stint in Maltby. There is evidence (see below) that both W.S. Robison and his older brother Ernest (together with his wife Ethel and the first of their children) were living in the house well before 1910.
“Looking west from our front window. We can see more salt water than is shown here. The school house shown so plainly is the Ross school this side of Ballard. Ethel”
This postcard was sent by Ethel Reisenbach, who had married Ernest Robison in Joplin around 1900, but accompanied the Robison–Victor household to Seattle.
The Ross School (which was torn down in 1941) mentioned in the text was at 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue (the Eastern limit of Ballard), so the angle of the view clearly suggests that the photo was taken from the lower 4200 block of Greenwood Avenue, looking down the wooded slopes of Phinney Ridge in upper Fremont, i.e., exactly where the yard of the Robison house was. Ethel’s mention that she “can see more salt water than is shown here” may refer to the view of Salmon Bay Waterway, partially obscured on the postcard by the smoke of mills and which continues around to the left outside of the picture plane. The card is post-marked March 1907.
This postcard (from London, dated August 1908) from Edward Cheasty, the proprietor of a well-known men’s clothing store on Second Avenue in Seattle, shows that W. S. Robison was living on Greenwood Avenue in the summer of 1908. Cheasty was apparently on a buying trip to London and probably sent such cards to his list of recent or preferred customers. Robison had been in the real estate business since 1906 or 1907, had an office around the corner on Third Avenue, and no doubt was eager to “look the part.”
Charlie Victor Robison’s draft registration card shows he was living, at age 22, at 4220 Greenwood Avenue, on June 5, 1917 (the date on the back of this card). He claims an exemption from the draft on the grounds that his father is an invalid, and is dependent on him (as also is his wife and mother, he says). His father, William O. Robison, actually died four days later, on June 9, 1917. Charlie reports that he was working as a “shade maker” at the Bon Marché depatment store at Second Avenue and Pike Street.
Here is 4220 Greenwood Avenue, from almost the same angle as one of the first ones, above, probably sometime in the early or mid-1920’s. A tree has grown in the yard. A major addition, made at an unknown date, has changed the roof-line at the back of the house. Stairs have been built down to Greenwood Avenue. Other houses have been built nearby. That’s Sally Victor Robison out front. She looks like she threw on an overcoat to go out for the picture. As far as we know, Sally lived here until she died in January 1927.
Charlie Victor Robison and his mother, Sally Victor Robison, probably taken around 1920, and very likely at 4220 Greenwood Avenue. Note the oil lamps for lighting and wood-burning stove for heat. These pictures were probably taken by Charlie at a slow shutter speed (1/60?) using a self-timer: Charlie did not have enough time to get back into his chair before the shutter clicked! The coat that Sally is repairing looks like the one she is wearing in the picture outside, above. They may have been taken on the same occasion.
In August 2019 Sam, Wendy, Liane, Elena, Ryan and I drove to Fremont and found, mirabile dictu, that although every other building on the street and across the street, where the ridge-line falls away in the direction of what used to be a view of Ballard, is a boxy new apartment building or a tear-down of some kind, 4220 Greenwood Avenue is still standing. The lot is almost entirely overgrown. A basement apartment had been dug out beneath the house and was occupied, when we visited, by a man named Ron Coombs, a cousin of the current owner who, he said, is in a nursing home. He told us we could wander around on the outside of the building (and could peak in at the 1960s-era Studebaker in the garage, which we did). The place was so overgrown that there were no good angles for pictures. It will no doubt disappear very soon. But for now, and for the record, here it is!
