100-year-old home in Puyallup will be demolished. New parks trail to open next year
The vacant house on the hill near Wildwood Park is in bad shape, including water damage and damage to the roof, city spokesperson Eric Johnson told The News Tribune in an email.
Pierce County records show the home at 1701 13th St. SE was built in the 1920s, he said. The city bought it in 2022 for $500,000, according to Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer records.
Crews expected to start demolition Jan. 28 and finish it by Feb. 7, Johnson said. The city plans to build a trail through the property from Wildwood Park to the site of a future park at the bottom of the hill, the Labelle Neighborhood Park. He expects the trail to open next year.
The property has ties to a longtime mental health facility across the street. Dr. John Waldo Snoke founded the Puget Sound Sanitarium for Mental and Nervous Diseases in 1909, according to a South Hill Historical Society newsletter from 2011 and to Holly O'Brien, the curator for the Puyallup Historical Society at Meeker Mansion.
Snoke was the assistant superintendent of Western State Hospital in Steilacoom, O'Brien said.
'He purchased a failing sanitarium from another doctor in Steilacoom and, after a false start with some neighbors who were not too happy about another sanitarium in the neighborhood, he purchased what is known the Minnich property on South Hill,' she wrote in an email to The News Tribune. 'According to Dr. Snoke's son, 'the property already had a large home as well as several outbuildings.' The original Victorian home was converted into a hospital and several more buildings were added onto what became known as the Puget Sound Sanitarium.'
O'Brien said he thought his patients would benefit from 'fresh air and activity' and that there was a dairy on the property, according to a Tacoma Daily Ledger article.
'Dr. Snoke ran and lived at this facility for several years, bringing on his former co-worker Dr. Albert Cross Stewart,' O'Brien wrote. Snoke had a home built on the property in 1928.
'Dr. Snoke and his family lived in the house for a short time before turning over the sanitarium and the house to Dr. Stewart,' her email said. 'The Stewart family lived in the house and operated the facility until Dr. Stewart's death in 1944. Shortly after his death, Dr. Stewart's wife sold the sanitarium, but continued to live in the 1928 house.'
Stewart was stationed at Fort Lewis during World War I and studied 'shell shock' — post traumatic stress disorder, the South Hill Historical Society newsletter explained. His daughter, Laurie Stewart Minnich, remembered patients at the facility who suffered from flashbacks of the war.
He bought Snoke's facility 'with new ideas on how to better treat his patients,' the newsletter said.
Today the facility across from the 1928 house is the Luckett House, a residential behavioral health facility owned by MultiCare that helps 'people with serious chronic psychiatric conditions, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, transition back to more independent community living situations,' the health system's website says.
Laurie Stewart Minnich and her husband, Scott Minnich, eventually moved into the 1928 home. Scott Minnich was an Air Force officer and was Puyallup's mayor from 1980-81. Their son, Bob Minnich, helped care for his mother in that home after his father died.
Both had strong ties to the region's history. Laurie Stewart Minnich volunteered at the Meeker Mansion for decades, and Bob Minnich was the longtime president of the Puyallup Historical Society.
Bob Minnich died in 2017 at the age of 66, and was posthumously awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Pierce County Heritage League for his historic preservation work, The News Tribune reported.
His mother lived in the home until 2019, O'Brien said.
Andy Anderson, a local historian and former president of the Puyallup Historical Society, was close friends with Bob Minnich. He said mother and son had geese, ducks and many peacocks on the property near Wildwood Park.
'They were pretty soft-hearted and wound up eventually with a lot of them,' he said. 'And a peacock is a noisy thing. And when they decided to go some place, they could wind up a half mile away, and there would be a call in the middle of the night: 'Bob, we've got one of your peacock.''
Anderson used to bring them peacock recipes as a joke.
He remembers the home as an old white house in the woods.
'The house is an interesting house,' he said. 'It is not a recognized historical property because nobody has gone through the paperwork, but there are some interesting windows that were designed by one of the followers of Frank Lloyd Wright.'
Bob Minnich said the windows were designed by architect Andrew P. Willatzen, Anderson said, who reportedly worked with Wright in the early 1900s.
Johnson, the city spokesperson, directed questions about the history of the home, including what will happen to the windows, to the Puyallup Historical Society at Meeker Mansion.
'We let their staff come and visit the house and take any items they believed to be of historical significance,' Johnson wrote.
O'Brien, the curator, gave The News Tribune a different account of the architectural history.
She said the 1928 home was 'designed by Seattle architect Andrew P. Willatzen who was rumored to have worked under Frank Lloyd Wright. However, the Historical Society has reached out to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation who have confirmed that there are no records of Andrew P. Willatzen working with Mr. Wright.'
She wrote that 'the architectural design is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright design' and that they managed to confirm some sort of communication from Willatzen to Wright, but not about the Snoke house.
Anderson said he doesn't think many residents even know the home is there. It's hidden in the woods. He said the area used to be largely undeveloped, except for the Minnich property and an adjacent gravel pit.
The owner of the gravel pit had a private museum, he said, with an eclectic collection that included things like a Bavarian carriage, among other oddities. Bob Minnich was interested, and Anderson remembered that when Minnich finished taking his time going through it one day, the owner met him at the other end and told him he hadn't taken long enough.
O'Brien said she thinks Vinton 'Vint' Greeley and his wife Grace started that gravel pit in the 1940s, and ran Hilltop Gravel Company until 1959.
'The Greeley family lived nearby where they owned and operated the Puyallup Frontier Museum,' O'Brien wrote. 'There are people who remember the gravel pit who grew up in the area around the 1960s, but otherwise there is not much in the historic records to report on.'
The museum is gone, and today the gravel pit is a subdivision of homes just off 23rd Avenue Southeast.
'Everyone who goes through that part of South Hill today thinks it's always been that way,' Anderson said.
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