Kirkland Cannery Building Looks Much The Same Today as it Did in the 1930s

Most longtime Kirkland residents must have memories, undoubtedly fond ones, of the historic Kirkland Cannery building, built during the Great Depression by the Works Progress Administration, or WPA.

According to a story in the November/December 2009 issue of the Kirkland Heritage Society journal Blackberry Preserves, the WPA also built a school in Kirkland and the old baseball field and bleachers at Peter Kirk Park, both now gone.

So the cannery building on Eighth Avenue near downtown is even more significant as the last of the WPA structures in town. The WPA was a New Deal agency that put millions of Americans to work over its existence from 1935 to 1943. 

The 11,000-square-foot wooden structure was built beginning in 1935 and opened as a free public cannery in 1936. Remarkably, it looks almost the same today–see the “Now” photo–as it did in the 1930s. The “Then” photo is from the Kirkland Heritage Society’s archives and dated “about 1935,” but it appears the cannery was operational at the time so it could be a bit later.

The cannery building today is not protected by state or federal landmark status, but it is a designated landmark in the city of Kirkland’s comprehensive plan, says Angela Ruggeri, senior planner for the city.

“It’s definitely a building of historic value,” she says. “It’s got historic value not only in the building itself, but also in what it represents.”

Several years ago the city unsuccessfully explored options for its preservation.

“The problem is, the city doesn't have any money to do that,” Ruggeri says.

The building is owned by Thad Pound, who last operated it as the Kirkland Custom Cannery in 2001. And its operation by the Pound family beginning in 1947 is a fascinating story in itself.

By 1964 it was processing primarily seafood, according to the Heritage Society’s story. Later it served not only as a cannery, but also as a major smokehouse operation, smoking fish, fowl and even cheese.

I can personally vouch for the fact that the cannery produced superior products. The cannery for years smoked and canned salmon and albacore tuna for sport fishermen, and in the mid-1970s I took five large chinook–“king salmon”–that my wife and I had caught aboard my father’s Westport-based charter fishing boat.

We had some simply canned, some smoked and canned and some just smoked and left un-canned. The fresh smoked salmon disappeared in short order, and we enjoyed the two or three cases of canned salmon for the next year or more.

Thad Pound is now retired and apparently would like to find a buyer for the building.

Some have suggested it would make a wonderful venue for a museum. We can only hope this historic structure remains a tangible part of Kirkland’s past and future.