King County Landmarks: Smith-Baldwin House (1912), Vashon Island

See Additional Media
Address: 11408 Cedarhurst Road, Vashon, Vashon Island. The Smith-Baldwin house, located on a low bank waterfront lot on the northwest end of Vashon Island, was designed in 1912 for Elizabeth N. Smith by noted Seattle architect Harlan Thomas. The house, known as the “Rose Cottage” is built in the Georgian Revival Style. Expansive multi-paned sash, beveled siding, the truncated hip roof, the prominent oversize porch, and Thomas’s use of patterned brick and roses on pergolas and trellises all combine to create a house sited and scaled to complement its natural setting. In 1908, Smith’s daughter, Dr. Belle Baldwin and her husband Albert moved to the property. Among the first wave of women to be awarded medical degrees, Dr. Baldwin had graduated from the University of Michigan in 1888. Baldwin maintained a practice in Seattle, and lived at Fern Cove until 1942. The house is now (2000) part of the Vashon Park District’s 13.5 acre Fern Cove Preserve. A gambrel roofed carriage house has been restored for use as an interpretive center.
Sources: King County Landmarks and Heritage Commission.
Related Topics
Buildings Landmarks
Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You