The Old Houghton School, Some 100 Years Ago

Sometime around 1879 the little lakeside community known at Pleasant Bay – “wild, primitive country” wrote an early settler – became Houghton, and by 1885 there were more than 100 hardy souls there and a beautiful schoolhouse.

This photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society is undated, but a note indicates it was taken after the original stairs were remodeled. Society president Loita Hawkinson figures it was taken in the early 1900s, but perhaps as early as the late 1890s.

What a stunning structure, bell tower and all, especially for its day! There were no warehouse hardware stores back then – presumably the lumber was milled locally, no doubt from old-growth trees, likely the favored Douglas fir.

It stood on the shore of Yarrow Bay, beginning well before the breeching of the Montlake Cut in 1916 lowered Lake Washington by 8.8 feet. It was just south of today’s NE 52^nd Street, then known as Curtis Road.

This was the original Houghton – today most of us think of Houghton as the shopping area up the hill to the east and north.

The school was just south of the pioneering Curtis family home. A bit farther south around the head of Yarrow Bay lived another pioneer family, the Northups, for whom today’s Northup Way is named.

Today there is no vestige of the school or the Curtis home. The country is no longer wild and primitive at all.

Just what happened to the school we could not determine. But Kirkland historian Matt McCauley says survived into the second half of the 20^th Century.

Certainly someone living today must know. We’d love to hear from them.

For now we can only look at the photo and imagine the clang of the bell, the laughter of students from long ago, and the patter of feet climbing the steps.