There’s a massive, growth-like accumulation of spider webs and dust in one corner of the Shell House’s exterior roofing. A piece of wood juts out from the siding to form an upside-down L shape — most likely a drain of some sort. Like many aspects of the Shell House, this feature feels both utilitarian and poetic. I take a picture and move along, trailing the perimeter.
Those I’ve spoken to for this article have all expressed in one way or another that the Shell House is meant to be entered from the water. Situated on the Northeast corner of the Montlake Cut, the very end of the man-made canal which allows Lake Union to flow into Lake Washington, this century-old boat house is a well-known landmark for boaters of all sorts in Seattle. Large hangar doors open onto the Cut — inoperable since the early aughts, but once an important launchpad for UW’s rowing team. Despite their being indefinitely closed, these some 60ft long doors hold a sense of potentiality; a feeling that they may, at any second, give way to a fleet of canoes.
I can attest that a waterborne visit must be a far more natural experience than the shoddy makings of my self-service tour. I’ve driven my car down the back, coming from the sprawl of University of Washington’s parking lots behind Husky Stadium and around the rear entrance past a sign that reads “WATERCRAFT AREA ONLY.” I’m parked in a 30-minute load and unload spot next to construction vehicles; college kids sit in the sun on a dock nearby. From land, you would only really know that this place exists if you’re familiar with the story behind it — otherwise, you’re likely to miss it.
Professor Kathryn Merlino, Director of the Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse (CPAR) at UW, uses the word palimpsest on the phone with me as we discuss what makes the Shell House so special. I don’t quite catch it, so I ask her to repeat it a bit later into our conversation. Palimpsest is a Latin word, first used to describe parchment that had been written on and erased many times over so that the indentation of the previous writings could be seen and/or felt. More importantly, it’s a word that architects love, one that articulates the history of a space — small details which, like marks on a page, can point to a rich past.
“It's the idea of seeing layers, either faint or profound, that make a space richer, maybe a bit messy, more complex,” Professor Merlino explains to me. “Whether or not you know what the history is, you’re aware of one.”
Most people in Seattle are indeed aware of a certain history associated with the Shell House. Built during WWI, it was used as a Navy seaplane hangar for less than a year before the war ended and was repurposed as the headquarters for UW’s rowing program — an adaptive reuse project from its inception. The legend of “The Boys in the Boat” was then born: an underdog rowing team out of UW makes it to the 1936 Berlin Olympics to compete and win against Nazi-backed German rowers. Famous racing shell designer George Pocock made the eaves of the Shell House into his personal workshop, quietly crafting three decades worth of boats in the upper level mezzanine, including the shells used by the titular Boys. Maybe you’ve read the best-selling book by Daniel James Brown or seen the 2023 Hollywood blockbuster directed by George Clooney; either way, the story of this olympic rowing team has made the Shell House into a sacred place for rowers.
In the 1950s, UW’s rowing program moved its operation out of the Shell House; it then became a rental and storage facility for canoes. In 1974, plans by the city to demolish the Shell House were met with outrage from local rowing enthusiasts and preservationists. Soon after, the building was designated a Seattle landmark with the help of the Landmarks Preservation Board, affording it immunity from destruction for the decades to follow. However, the funds weren’t there to repair and maintain the aging building, and it has gone largely without much-needed improvements ever since.
In 2017, the University launched the fundraising campaign, “ASUW Shell House: The Next 100 Years,” with the goal of restoring the Shell House once and for all, turning it into an event space and maybe even a museum celebrating the Pocock shop. The campaign, led by UW’s Director of Development for Student Life Nicole Klein and backed by a diverse Board of Trustees, was able to ride the momentum of both the novel and the film to raise just under 20 million dollars.
Multiple design teams bid on the project — “Everybody wants a piece of this building,” I’m told by Prof. Merlino, whose Miller Hull-led team came in second place — but the winning team, Seattle-based design firm Mithun in tandem with Sellen Construction, has plans to highlight the importance of the Shell House beyond just the rowing story, parsing out the palimpsest-y layers which turn an old building into a record of its past.
I sit down with Richard Franko, one of the partners at Mithun leading the ASUW Shell House renovation. He’s an adaptive reuse junkie, and he makes it clear to me right off the bat that this project is about more than just UW men’s rowing.
“It starts with the indigenous story,” Franko tells me.
The Montlake Cut did not exist until the early 1900’s, but that small piece of land which once separated Lake Union from Lake Washington had been in use as a passageway for centuries by the Coast Salish People. The Duwamish name for the isthmus meant “to lift a canoe” in Lushootseed, indicating a place where indigenous groups would manually crossover from one lake to the next, maybe stopping to rest or eat before continuing on their travels. Before white settlers used dynamite to create a permanent canal, this land had long been functioning as a passageway for the Duwamish people.
Franko and his team seem dedicated to highlighting this story, and more, but he also stresses how complicated this project is and will continue to be from a construction perspective.
“It’s an area with a lot of entitlement overlays,” he tells me. The Shell House is not only under the purview of both UW Recreation and the Army Corp of Engineers (left over from its original wartime purpose), but it is also built on unstable land, both a shoreline and a liquefaction zone, sparking safety and environmental concerns.
Prof. Merlino echoes this sentiment during our phone call, calling the project a “great opportunity for environmental stewardship.” The E12 parking lot, which I drove through to find the Shell House, is perched right above the water’s edge like a desert of asphalt, waiting for the rainwater to send toxins from our cars down into the Montlake Cut, a known salmon route. “The University of Washington is considered a salmon safe school, but we need to continuously follow up on that commitment,” Merlino says.
With this abundance of potential, I ask Franko what the next steps are — I’m aware from my journalistic forays into the architecture world that many design teams have their hopes and dreams ruthlessly squashed by budget caps and last-minute discoveries. Merlino had already expressed concern over an extremely tight budget given the scope of the project, and I can tell Franko is trying his hardest to be conservative in his goals. The challenge, he informs me, will be preserving the historic elements — the windows, the hangar doors, the original, oxidized wood inside — while bringing the building up to code with accessible entrances, fire sprinklers, and temperature control, to name a few. After those boxes are checked, the more fun elements can be discussed: transforming the upper mezzanine into a George Pocock museum, using the alcoves formed by buttresses as exhibit spaces, opening the doors onto water and maybe even installing a deck for use during events. All these ideas are subject to what the construction team finds when they actually begin working on the building in the fall of 2024.
“Historic renovation work is the most challenging; it’s constantly unfolding. We’ll be on site and they’ll pop up some roof thing and find rotting at the top of the trusses and suddenly it all has to be replaced.”
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During the week following my solo excursion to the Shell House, I find myself on a friend’s tiny motorboat, our knees knocking as she stabilizes the rudder. We’re passing through the Cut into Lake Washington, and the sunlight glints off the dusty windows in those massive hangar doors, beckoning to passersby such as myself. It’s a tantalizing view, admittedly better enjoyed from the water.
“[The Shell House] is very porous,” Nicole Klein tells me as we discuss how she got involved with the fundraising effort. “You can hear everything from the waves lapping, to the seaplane that just landed, to the rowers going by making calls — everything comes in. Where buildings today are often very controlled and conditioned, this just breathes.”
