Location: 1114 Woodard Ave NW
Local register?
Harvey Woodard House 1952, Thurston County Assessor, Southwest Regional Archives |
Harvey Woodard House today (2014), photograph by Deb Ross |
The Harvey Woodard House is thought to be the second oldest existing residence in Olympia, after the Bigelow House. It was erected some time between 1858 and the early 1860s by Harvey Woodard, the patriarch of the pioneer Woodard family. The family arrived here in 1853 and after a short period of living at what is now Woodard Bay, Harvey moved to Tumwater and established a mill. Later he moved here to West Olympia and built a house, thought to be this one. Later on, his son A.E. Woodard (called Dell, short for Adelbert) moved here and established a well-known orchard. A photograph of A.E. with his neighbor Matilda Schneider Johnston and their two small boys, linked below, shows them at the rear of the property. A.E.’s brother A.B. Woodard, a dentist and photographer, lived in the Woodard House just below here on West Bay Drive. (A.E.’s son, Carl, built the Carl Woodard House, also on the West Side)
The home is a well preserved, rare, and interesting example of box, or plank, construction, where the entire outside of the home is made of planks with no supporting framework. It is made of hand-hewn cedar planks, set on hand-hewn beams. It is perched on a bluff overlooking Budd Inlet with a spectacular view of Mount Rainier. It is not clear whether this home is on the local register, as databases of register properties are inconsistent.
Photograph of A.E. and Carl Woodard with neighbor Matilda Schneider Johnston, Washington State Historical Society, enter the following catalog number in Collection Search box, C1949.1301.33.33
For more information on the Woodard family, see the Residents section of this website.
Copyright © 2022 Deborah Ross