The condos inside the historic Queen Anne High School building have now been on the market since 2006. There are at least 3 units still floating around for a
whopping $450 to $700 / square foot. “Own a piece of history” they always say, well, if you’ve got the cash. This magnificent Beaux-Arts beauty was built in 1909, with significant additions in 1929 and 1955.
After the school was shuttered in the early 1980′s it was sold to developers for use as apartments. In 2006 the condo market came a callin’ and still calls here in 2009.
Here’ s a 1940
shot. Click for higher res.
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| Queen Anne High School, 1940. Museum of History & Industry Photograph Collection . |
What’s really too bad is that all the tenants, many of whom had been there for years, were tossed, unless they could come up with the money required to purchase their unit at the grossly-inflated prices.
Sure, these are very cool spaces, but not $700 per sq ft spaces.
And why the property was ever sold by the school district so it would become condos, as opposed to keeping for potential future use, as was the plan with the apartments (tenants would have only been displaced with ample notice – much more than they got under the condo scheme), baffles me.
The sale felt like a gift of public funds for all the profit without much investment the condo converters reaped.
We looked at these places over two years ago, when the penthouse featured in the current link was still an unfinished shell. The whole idea of a high school as a residential building seemed eerily uninviting and incongruous. The view out the million dollar penthouse window also includes the not-so-attractive high school annex and the adjacent asphalt parking lot.
I just wanted to say that I think your site is quite nice and very interesting. I moved to Seattle a short time ago, and am just getting to know the city. It’s interesting to peruse your site and reflect upon the history of the area as well.
Create space and light, but blimey, that price is crazy. If you ask me, you can always tell the quality of a condo by not the hardwood floors and fancy colors, but by the fixtures and appliances.. and, er, it certainly doesn’t seem worth the price. Love the curved windows though.
Wow, what a lot of whiners you are. Here a beautiful old historic building is not going to the wrecking ball, and is actually a living breathing part of a neighborhood 100 yrs later and you are whining and kvetching about it. Way to enforce the stereotype that those of us who love historic buildings are really just a bunch of bitter NIMBYs and anti-progress fussing biddies.
Also, renting tennants get first refusal to buy their unit when a building goes condo. I don’t know what is more fair than that. Condo conversions in historic, unique apartment buildings are a good thing…look at all the beautiful old apartment buildings on capitol hill that absent landlords (slumlords) let get so shaby due to expensive upkeep it becomes more profitable to sell to a developer. And guess what goes up in its place? A shitty new cookie-cutter condo development. A better alternative is restoring the original, historic building by allowing to go condo and be restored before it gets to that point. Its a pity the current economic downturn is hurting Live Historic.
Now’s your chance. Get one while it’s on discount:
http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2009/03/02/story4.html
It’s still a great obscenity that this school was closed. Social engineering run wild. There went the neighborhood, there it goes and there it will go. Typical Seattle school negligence to underprice the property when it was sold, also.