Pink House

posted by littlelittle on January 19, 2012

The Charles Pink House stands proud and elegant, on the corner of Harrison and Lawrence, and is a prized piece of Port Townsend’s Uptown National Historic District, but it came perilously close to being demolished. The house was built by Horace Tucker in 1868 and purchased by Charles Pink in 1874 and it remained in the Pink family until 1966. From 1966, the home passed through a succession of owners until it was purchased by the City ofPort Townsendin 1981. The City planned to relocate the house so the historic Carnegie Library next door could be expanded. After years of debate, the City decided to keep the house in place if they could find a tenant willing to renovate the house. They could not find an interested party since the house had been neglected for years and was in total disrepair. The likely fate for the Pink House was demolition.

In 1993, Bob Little stepped forward and made the City and offer: lease him the ground for twenty five years and he would restore it and lease it to commercial tenants. It took months to work through red tape before Little & Little Construction could begin work. Little & Little began by shoring up the structure, then gutted it, put in new plumbing, rewired the building, and put up new walls. Architectural details were discovered that had been lost in remodels over the past one hundred years. Little & Little brought the old fireplace back to life and discovered beautiful old archways and plaster details. Victorian bays added in the late 1880s were left in place, but the Art and Crafts style porch – added in one of the numerous remodels through the years – was eliminated. Using old photos and the Rothschild House (also built by Horace Tucker) as a pattern, the porch was restored, with the porch railings painstakingly reproduced.

The Pink House was restored to meet both Washington State Archaeological and Department of Interior Guidelines. The Jefferson County Historical Society awarded this joint public-private partnership the Mary Johnson Preservation Award for contributing to the architectural heritage of the Port Townsend Area. The Pink House is special to Port Townsend because of its late Greek Revival architectural style and it is one of the few houses built in the 1860s that survives in Washington.