RESOURCES
The Gil and Erselle Eade House Video
THE GIL AND ERSELLE EADE HOUSE, Hunts Point, Washington.
ROYAL McCLURE, Architect.
Watch the Eade House video (14 minutes, 28 MB).
The Eade house, heretofore little known, is among the finest examples, may even be the masterpiece, of the architectural context of which it is a part.
In the mid-1960's Gil and Erselle Eade decided to build a home on their property on Hunts Point, an independent community on a peninsula projecting northward from the eastern shore of Lake Washington. The site was a west-facing waterfront lot, 85 by 600 feet, with a magnificent view across the lake toward Seattle. The Eades intended that the design respect the site, with no radical changes of topography, no cutting of old-growth trees. All rooms should have views, but should be screened from neighbors to either side. Wood was to be the dominant material. Gil sought not a "style" but a place of "refuge, prospect, complexity and order."
After interviewing several architects, the Eades chose Royal McClure, a 1942 graduate of the University of Washington. McClure had formed a Spokane partnership with architect Tom Adkinson in the 1950's and then relocated to Seattle just prior to the Eade commission The rapport between McClure and the Eades was immediate, because of McClure's transparently sincere interest in the Eades and their four children, and his equally evident deep respect for the qualities of the site.
The Eade house is executed primarily in wood, meticulously and lovingly detailed; therefore belonging to the general body of regional domestic work of the time often referred to as Pacific Northwest Modernism . But it is unique in being essentially a single room; all habitable interior spaces open to, and are part of, a great skylit central space. Habitable spaces are arranged in two two-story zones to east and west.
The eastern zone includes a spacious entry, master bedroom, baths, and a study, on the upper floor, with children's bedrooms and baths below. The western zone provides breakfast, kitchen, dining, and living spaces, and a small deck, on its somewhat lower main floor. Access to the waterfront lawn below is provided through the lower floor. A bridge connects the two upper-floor zones. Expansive areas of glass open eastward toward the entry garden, and westward to dramatic views across the lake. North and south walls, facing adjacent properties, are opaque.
The Eades were
stewards of the house and site until 1999. In later years the garden and waterfront
evolved under Gil's direct design and construction. The eastern garden is a complex,
evocative sequence of deflecting paths, meandering streams, tranquil pools, massive
boulders, ancient stumps, moss and lichen. In 1997, under Gil's direction, the
waterfront shoreline was returned to what it must have been long ago, before human
intervention, when nature alone determined its character. This taped material
is the only record of its type of the original house which has since been significantly
altered.
- Susan Boyle and Grant Hildebrand
In commemorating the 50th anniversary of the chapter's founding, the original copies of the VHS, DVD, and web files of the completed Eade House documentary were presented to the Special Collections & University Archives Department of the University of Oregon Libraries for inclusion in the Marion Dean Ross / Pacific Northwest Chapter archive.