Project Details Page

synopsis

Civic leader and businessman Albert Kerry built his home in The Highlands on a triangular wooded lot. Native forest enclosed the rectilinear house and the Olmsted-designed formal gardens, flower parterres, grand arbor and radial rose garden giving way to lawn, informal borders and peripheries of natural woodland with grass paths. The home and landscape, changed over time, remain in family hands.

Civic leader and businessman Albert Kerry built his home in The Highlands on a triangular wooded lot. Native forest enclosed the rectilinear house and the Olmsted-designed formal gardens, flower parterres, grand arbor and radial rose garden giving way to lawn, informal borders and peripheries of natural woodland with grass paths. The home and landscape, changed over time, remain in family hands.

Michigan-born Albert Sperry Kerry moved West with only his initiative, and by the turn of the century had built his fortune in lumber, real estate and railroad enterprises. He was the moving force behind construction of the Rainier Club and Olympic Hotel downtown, “a man who got results in everything he undertook.” As Park Board President, he donated 80% of the purchase price for Kerry Park on Queen Anne Hill. Like many colleagues, he purchased a country lot in The Highlands, an upscale new subdivision north of the city.

After much debate over architectural style, the Kerrys had Seattle architects Willatzen and Byrne design a long, deep-eaved, house echoing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School. Olmsted Brothers developed landscape plans in tandem, influencing the architectural configuration and building placement on the site as well as designing exterior structures, the approach drive and extensive plantings. The resulting landscape ranged from symmetrical formality to nearly wild, in carefully-conceived progressions.

A graceful oval loop drive penetrated the forest from the street and opened to the house’s front entrance. Extending the line of the house on the south was a long wooden pergola that divided the rose garden from the formal garden and provided a backdrop for both. “The style of this pergola is such as will harmonize with the character of the house and…as simple and inexpensive as possible; at the same time it is substantial and good in design.” To integrate architecture and landscape, “this pergola should be covered with vines which have been chosen with care and thought on the one side to combine with the colors of the flowers in the flower garden, and on the other side to harmonize with the rose garden. Plants…are to be set in the planting beds between the posts in the pergola, which gives a charming effect.”

By contrast, the 1909 grading plan showed that “on the West side of the house…grass trails will lead in a naturalistic manner through the woods.” The following summer Olmsted wrote, “…it seems to us that the slope and fir thicket just north of the vegetable garden and service yard should be treated in a wild way, entirely different from the more gardenesque treatment of the borders of the large west lawn. We would therefore suggest using native lupins at the bottom of the slope and native shrubs such as Philadelphus, Spiraea, and Salmon berry at the top of the slope & running into the fir growth. The outline of the fir growth should not present a regular line parallel to the road but should be broken back in an irregular way here and there. We would also suggest using a few flowering crab apples on the edge of the fir growth.”

The Kerry landscape epitomizes the introduction of refined elements in a wild place to create commodious, beckoning settings outside, while also protecting, enhancing and welcoming people to enjoy the inherent beauty of the native setting. The formal garden was destroyed long ago to make room for more informal plantings, but the loop drive, expansive lawns and wooded paths remain much as originally designed, as does the beautifully-preserved house where Kerry’s great grandson now lives.

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