"MadArt" Houses on Bellevue Ave E, north of E Roy St, Capitol Hill / Photo: Eugenia Woo
MAin2 recently visited the MadArt exhibit in North Capitol Hill where five early twentieth-century houses are being used as blank canvasses for temporary art installations. The exhibit runs through August 7, 2011 (700 block of Bellevue Avenue E, north of E Roy Street). According to MadArt’s website, the goal is to “provide unexpected enjoyment and a distinctive educational experience for the neighborhood and visitors, while providing local artists a valuable and rare opportunity to create artwork.”
The exhibit has received lots of local attention and the focus has been on the art. The five houses have been referred to as “crumbling” or “decaying” by the media. They are slated for demolition to make way for new private residential development by Seattle developer Point32. The residences are next to the BelRoy Apartments—a Lionel Pries designed building that was designated a Seattle Landmark in 2010 (Point32 submitted the landmark nomination.) As part of the larger project proposal, the BelRoy Apartments will be rehabilitated. Some materials from the five houses may be salvaged before demolition and some efforts have been made to try to relocate the houses. Relocating five houses presents a challenge in terms of finding receiving sites and willing new owners; dealing with the logistics of clearing utility lines, street trees and Metro bus trolley lines; and navigating hilly topography. Given these challenges, the houses will most likely not be moved but destroyed (minus whatever materials can be salvaged), adding viable, old housing stock to the landfill and depriving this block on Capitol Hill of its only remaining single family residences. The historic context of what was there will be gone forever given the hodgepodge of multi-family development that exists now. (more…)
