2015 Holiday Tour of Historic Homes Benefitting the Olympia Historical Society & Bigelow House Museum
Nov 12, 2015
The Olympia Historical Society & Bigelow House Museum is sponsoring the Holiday Tour of Historic Homes. This year’s event is on Sunday, December 6, 2015 from noon to 4:00 p.m. and features six historic properties including the Bigelow House at 918 Glass Avenue NE, where tickets and refreshments will be available the day of the tour. This year’s tour features several homes in southeast Olympia as well as two of the earliest homes of the area. Tour ticket holders can enjoy a 10% discount at Vic’s Pizzeria, Olympia Coffee Roasting Company, The Lucky Lunch Box and Spud’s Produce Market in the Wildwood Shopping Center locations only on December 6, 2015 from noon to 4:00 pm by showing their tour ticket. The Trueman “Bink” and Virginia Schmidt House on Maringo Road is one of the outstanding modern homes of Olympia. Dating from 1950, it is listed on the Olympia, State and National Registers of Historic Places. Two homes on Governor Stevens Avenue SE have Minimal Traditional style from the 1930s and 1940s and are associated with the Le May Family. The Watkins House on Governor Stevens Avenue SE, listed on the Olympia Heritage Register, is a Tudor Cottage built in the 1920s as a kit house by Tumwater Lumber Mills. Tour goers can visit the historic nearby G. V. Valley Wildwood Center at 2822-2828 S. Capitol Way—an early shopping center built in the late 1930s in the Art Deco Style Also on the tour is the Crosby House on Deschutes Way which shares many of the Carpenter Gothic mid-19th century design elements of the Bigelow House and is from the same period. Visitors will be able to enjoy these two earliest existing homes in the area—both listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Tour tickets are $15.00 per person and are available in advance at Drees at 524 Washington St. SE; Popinjay at 414 Capitol Way S., and Thompson Furniture at 5407 Capitol Boulevard and online at olympiahistory.org. Day of Tour tickets will be available at both the Bigelow House and Crosby House. Sponsors of the event are Olympia Federal Savings, Paul Battan, Attorney at Law, Connolly Tacon & Meserve Attorneys at Law and Drees. Proceeds of the tour benefit the preservation and interpretation of Olympia’s historic Bigelow House and the Olympia Historical Society. One of the state’s oldest residences, the Bigelow House is owned by the non-profit Olympia Historical Society & Bigelow House Museum. The house has its original furnishings and has been restored to reflect Washington’s Territorial period, along with later period dining room and kitchen. It was the home of Daniel and Ann Elizabeth White Bigelow and their descendants for well over 100 years before becoming a museum. Please see www.olympiahistory.org. or e-mail olyhistory@gmail.com.
