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Skagit River Journal

of History & Folklore
Free Home Page Stories & Photos
The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit
Covers from British Columbia to Puget Sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan, Snohomish & BC. An evolving history dedicated to committing random acts of historical kindness
Noel V. Bourasaw, editor (bullet) 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284
Home of the Tarheel Stomp (bullet) Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug
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What's new in Sedro-Woolley? April 2008

(Nick Vigarino)
Sedro-Woolley folk were introduced to first-class entertainment on the evening of May 18, 2007, as the new owners of the Boondocks Bar & Grill staged their grand opening by launching their Friday Live Music series with the band of Nick Vigarino and company. I have followed Vigarino's career for the past couple of decades as he has risen through the ranks of blues guitarists to where he is now respected nationwide as a creative leader. He is hard to pigeonhole and he readily admits that his mix of songs is eclectic, drawing on many styles. The winner of the 2007 Best Acoustic Blues Guitar and 2006 Best Slide Guitar awards from the Washington Blues Society, he has three current CDs, with some duets featuring Mount Vernon's Kathi McDonald.
      He started on a one-string cheap guitar as a child in Youngstown, Ohio and eventually, after playing at dozens of clubs across the country, he would up in Seattle with his group called the Meantown Blues. He literally smoked through three sets, even strolling outside to lead his rhythm section — including a tenor saxophone, drums and electric bass — through a fiery blues tune, and people got up and dance; even your editor accepted an invitation from a beautiful young dancer. Those who attended will not forget this Boondocks grand opening, an auspicious beginning to what they plan for live music on Fridays. We can imagine that George Bellos Sr., who launched the Liberty Cafe in this spot in 1928, was looking on somewhere and smiling. As Bo Diddley once remarked: "That slide is naaasty!!"
Janicki Industries buys old city hall,
new city hall opens on Metcalf Street
      The old 1930 Sedro-Woolley City Hall was empty and officially on the market for barely a week in April 2008 when Sedro-Woolley Heritage Properties, LLC, a Janicki company bought the structure for $500,000.
      Spokesman Rob Janicki said that in the short term, employees from Janicki Industries will use part of the building for office space, but retail and office tenants are being sought. The family corporation purchased the building specifically to guarantee local ownership.
      "That's one of the reasons we bought the building," Janicki told the Sedro-Woolley Courier-Times. "The building's warmth anc charm prevent it from looking cold as some corporate offices do. Character cannot be built using today's cheaper materials."
      Meanwhile, the remaining city offices and staff moved into the new city hall on Metcalf Street late in March 2008. That new building adjoins the police station and fire hall, which has functioned on the eastern half of the block, south of the baseball field, for the past four years.
The Roost Books and Things to open in May
      Steven and Mary O'Neill have come home to Sedro-Woolley and are preparing to open a new store, The Roost-Books and Things, at 408B Metcalf Street, across the street from the new Sedro-Woolley City Hall. They will offer more than 10,000 used books, espresso drinks and a small coffee area in the front, along with prospecting supplies and they plan to be open by May 1, 2008.
      Steven graduated from Sedro-Woolley High School in 1968 and Mary (Carnahan) attended Cascade Junior High in 1957-58, the year it opened. Her mother, Lucille Carnahan, taught at Mary Purcell and at Big Lake elementary school in the 1950s. She is also helping organize the books before the opening. The O'Neills will offer the only assortment of gold-panning and other mining supplies in the area. They plan to credit customers for selected books they bring in for trade and they will also offer customers display shelves that they can rent to display their own books and goods.
Leo's Pizza becomes Coconut Kenny's
      If you are one of those who starts dreaming each winter in Washington about pina coladas and white sandy beaches, you will be pleased to know that Leo's Pizza will become Coconut Kenny's on Feb. 29, 2008. Coconut Tan Bros Inc. is expanding from their home location on James Street in Bellingham.
      If you are a fan of Leo Hayes, however, you might be sad that he has sold his business. The popular local musician bought the former pizza business in this location at the last moment when it was going out of business, and his jam sessions have been a real highlight. Leo, whose regular trade is as a contractor, is supervising the remodel of the building, with a planned reopening date by May 1, 2008.
New Sporting Goods store
      Mark Morgan, who opened Cascade Mountain Loans at 820 Metcalf Street in 1993, is preparing the building next door at 822 Metcalf for a new sporting goods store, which he hopes to have open by late summer 2008. That was the original location of the Piggly Wiggly Grocery in the 1920s. In the 1960s it was the original location of Greer Drummond's Valley Hardware and Morgan is buying the building from Drummond. Most recently it housed Bill's Framing Shop. This will be the first sporting goods store in town since Don Ostrom closed his store in the 800 block of Metcalf, where Just Moe's is now located.
Just Moe's Bar & Grill
      For those of you who have been waiting for the Castle Tavern to open in its new location on Metcalf Street, well, it has and then it hasn't. Michelle "Moe" Keenan-Anderson has been preparing the new location on the east side of the 700 block for the past year and in early December she opened her new Just Moe's Bar & Grill. We will have a more extensive story on it later this month. For those of you familiar with Sedro-Woolley history, this is the Swastika Building, erected in 1911, a few months after the famous July 1911 downtown Woolley fire. Old-timers will remember the space as Parker's Dependable Market and more recently it was Cost-Plus Sporting Goods in several incarnations. It does not look like the old Castle at all. Everything is proverbially up to date in Kansas City.
Stonehedge Art Gallery moves to historic Fritsch building building
(Fritsch building circa 1900)
The original Fritsch building, circa 1900
      Sheila Stewart is proud to note that her Stonehedge Art Gallery has already established itself as a downtown fixture in the historic Fritsch Hardware building at the northwest corner of Metcalf and Woodworth streets. She has replaced the former Sedro-Woolley Florists, who occupied the space for nearly 20 years. The building dates from 1907 but its history stretches further back to when P.A. Woolley was forming his namesake company town at the crossing of three railroad lines in 1890. Her grand opening ws on Friday afternoon and evening, June 15, 2007.
      "We have an extensive mix of both my own art and we have more than a dozen artists represented in consignment pieces," Sheila explained as we viewed the paintings, photographs and unique furniture and wall hangings all along all the walls and the floor that she opened up by dismantling the former wall that separated the front and back portions of the space. We were especially impressed with the photographs by August Kryger, the new reporter at the Courier-Times; the lovely local paintings by a painter named Mica from Bow; the blow glass by Richard Lowrie of Anacortes; and Sheila's series of paintings of musicians and their instruments.       The Fritsch family emigrated from Germany in 1871 to New Orleans, soon settling in Texas. Franz and Theresa Fritsch brought their young family to Washington Territory in 1882, settling first in Whatcom County. They moved to Sauk City in the late 1880s when that village where the Sauk River empties into the Skagit River became an important market center. At that time, gold-seekers at the Monte Cristo mines in the North Cascades shipped all their machinery up the Skagit and the Sauk rivers and bought their supplies and staples at Sauk City. The family survived the great fire of 1889 that nearly leveled the village, but a string of disastrous floods drove them downriver. Two sons, Frank and Joseph, decided to settle in Sedro, also on a flood plain by the river. In about 1892, they bought out the former Herman Waltz hardware store in old Sedro and they apparently operated it on high ground, maybe on Jameson Street, which was then the common ground between old and new Sedro, the latter town centered where the high school stands today. Their father, who had Americanized his name to Frank, opened a general store in Burlington, which he maintained for at least a decade.
      In 1897 the Fritsch brothers moved, along with many other businesses to the town of Woolley, a half mile to the northwest, which was on the ascendance as a market center. They apparently built a woodframe store at the northwest corner of Woodworth and Metcalf or occupied a standing building. A 1902 directory notes that the brothers also opened a machine shop that catered to logging and railroad concerns that needed metal repairs. That was the beginning of what would evolve into Skagit Steel & Iron Works over the next two decades, all contained in those early years in a back room. Frank Fritsch became a partner of John Anderson, the new company's founder, and they soon moved the rapidly growing business to the corner of Puget Street and the railroad tracks.
      In 1907, the brothers erected a new woodframe building that was destined to be the center of one of the biggest stories in Woolley history, with a firewall between two parts to protect paint in storage in case of fire. That was a wise move but not enough to prepare them for the fire that broke out in their oil shed on July 23, 1911, and wasn't contained until it destroyed two blocks of businesses in the heart of Woolley.
      The brothers quickly rebuilt, this time using brick and steel, and the building reopened in December 1911. The brothers sold their company in 1914 to the firm of Ludwick and Wuest, but in 1923, Ludwick-Wuest moved their hardware and appliance business to a new building where Bus Jungquist furniture stands today, and the Fritsch brothers soon moved back into their old building. The building and the hardware business went through several owners over the next five decades, for several years the home of Mt. Baker Hardware.
      Sheila Stewart breathes new fresh air in the building with her Stonehedge art gallery and garden, which has been a fixture for the past several years on the second floor of the Knights of Pythias building. Her patrons will be happy to know that they no longer have to climb the steep stairs to enjoy touring her eclectic mix of art, sculpture, photographs and handmade furniture and collectibles. You can read more about the building, the 1911 fire and the Fritsch brothers and family at the free website of the Skagit River Journal of History and Folklore, the home of Sedro-Woolley and Northwest history and genealogy, which passed 1.75 million views in July 2007.
A nursery rises at the old Palace Tavern location

(Old Time Saloon)
      This interior photo of the old Palace Tavern was taken sometime circa 1960 and was loaned by Deanna Ammons who obtained it from Alice's sister, Maude Wood, who is still very much alive in her 90s, in a senior home in Oak Harbor.

      Several new developments by businesses in Sedro-Woolley are on people's minds this month. One location will evoke memories of old-timers — that is, anyone who grew up here or lived here in the 1950s and '60s. Every time I ride my bicycle past the Tru-Value Hardware Store mini-nursery that has risen on Ferry Street, I smile and think about one of Sedro-Woolley's characters of the past, who was usually known as "Alice of the Palace.".
      You can read about the old Palace Tavern in our Journal feature about Jim and Blanche Gray. Jim was a Nova Scotia native who came to old Sedro in 1889 and after five years of logging, he decided there had to be a better way of making a living, so he opened the Palace Saloon facing on the planked Northern Avenue, across from the railroad depot in old Woolley. That was the first business street in P.A. Woolley's original company town, just east of his mill site, which later became part of the Skagit Steel site after several owners and various fires. The Palace eventually moved down Northern Avenue to the spot west of the Schneider building where the hardware store's open-air mini-nursery stands now. Jim's wife, Blanche, was one of the key people who kick-started a library in town.
      Alice took over the Palace in the 1950s after Jim Gray retired. The beautiful wooden backbar at the western wall of the tavern was manufactured by the Brunswick-Balke Company and shipped here by train from the Midwest in pieces, and then reassembled inside the bar. You can see a nearly identical back bar at the Schooner Tavern on Metcalf Street, which boasts the last such full-size backbar in the county. There used to be three of them in town. We hope that a reader can recall what happened to the one in the Palace and we would also like to know when the Palace was torn down, presumably in the late 1960s. The third one was in the old B&A Buffet, the old tavern that stood at the southwest corner of Metcalf and State streets, where the Wells Fargo Bank stands today.
Glenn Allen Jewelers officially closes . . . — DC's Printing and Awards opens in its place
(Glenn Allen Jewelers)
Glenn Allen Jr. in his store, circa 1960s. That may be his mother on the left. Can a reader identify both ladies? You will often find Glenn Allen III with that magnifier lens attached to his glasses.
      Update April 2007: Many local residents and old-timers were shocked in April 2006 to see the signs on the front of Glenn Allen Jewelers, 816 Metcalf Street: "Liquidation Sale . . . closing forever." Glenn Allen III, the last in a line of four generations of jewelers in the family was liquidating his stock and planned to just focus on his trophy and awards business in the future. Some people gasped: a landmark in downtown for 65 years is about to disappear. Then, shortly afterwards, Glenn reopened, after remodeling, as Glenn Allen Awards.
      Update December 2007: On December 1, however, the Allen ownership of both building and business did end. Don Coggins, a 1969 graduate of Sedro-Woolley High School, has bought the building. He and his wife, Rene, an Anacortes graduate, have taken over the awards/engraving part of the business and they are expanding their screenprinting business, which took over the front part of the building earlier in 2007.
      Don explains that he and his wife have been screen printing t-shirts and many other items — especially for school sports teams, out of their home for several years. They also offer embroidery and a process called "sublimation" for attaching logos and slogans to coffee cups, etc. They will continue to manufacture at their home office, but will retail from the store. Rene is also moving her Ponytails by Rene Hair Salon into the old back room of the building, which was erected in 1915. You may remember Don's former business, Pyramid Music, which was located from 1979-89 in the Mission Market and then on Hwy 20.

R.I.P. Glenn Allen Jewelers
      The old Glenn Allen Jewelers business all started with Horace Condy, back in 1900. We plan a feature soon on this pioneer, but here is a brief summary of his store. A native of Guelph, Ontario, Condy emigrated to the U.S. and lived briefly in Kentucky before moving to Sedro-Woolley in 1900, right after the merger of the two old towns. He arrived at the same time as St. Louis natives Joe Mott and Paul Rhodius, who opened a drug store on Metcalf Street where Hammer Heritage Square stands today, and Condy rented space in the Mott woodframe building. Condy started with a modest repair business but soon expanded to offer retail jewelry. In about 1903, he bought the stately clock that is still one of the most beloved historical landmarks on Metcalf.
      In 1906, Condy erected a brick building that still stands at 711 Metcalf Street as the downtown home of Janicki Industries. During the big July 1911 downtown Woolley fire, the structure was gutted, but he soon rebuilt and over the next three decades, Condy expanded to offer musical instruments and then established the first and most extensive optometry business in Skagit County. In 1919, Condy was joined by his nephew from Canada, Glenn Allen Sr. and in 1931, Harry Ingham joined Condy. When Condy retired and fell ill in 1940-41, Ingham moved down the street to the present location
      Allen joined Ingham and soon took over the business, establishing Glenn Allen Jewelers in 1941. When studying the business, one needs to keep the Glenns straight. Glenn Allen Sr. died in 1945, and his son, Glenn Allen Jr., took over the business when he returned from service in World War II. Glenn Sr.'s widow, Elizabeth Allen, helped staff the store for many years. Glenn Jr. ran the business for 43 years and remodeled the exterior sometime in the 1950s. His son, Glenn Allen III, is the present owner and is doubly famous for winding the Condy Clock weekly. Glenn III took over the business in 1988. His father died in 1990 and his mother, Joan Allen, still lives in Sedro-Woolley.
      Mrs. Edith Allen, now a very young 92 years, still lives in Sedro-Woolley and she recalls that her late husband, Harry Allen, came to Skagit County with another brother, the late Gordon Allen, from Ontario in 1918 to join their younger brother Glenn Allen Sr. Glenn III recalls that his grandfather came to Washington first and worked as a freehand engraver at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle in 1909.
      The store at 816 Metcalf was originally partitioned down the middle until Allen Jewelers was established. In the south half, the old pioneer Woolley barber Jack Ames had a small barber shop and he stored furs in the back. Ames had located two blocks north in P.A. Woolley's original company town in about 1890 and he branched out in the fur business after trekking up to Alaska during the Klondike gold rush. The north half of the building housed the millinery shop of the Hustead sisters. When Glenn Allen Sr. expanded his store, Flossie Hustead moved two buildings north to an old structure that was later torn down in 1957 for construction of the present Holland Drugs building.
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Story posted on May 5, 2006, last updated on Feb. 28, 2008
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