Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Bits and pieces
You would be amazed at the stacks of paperwork you can pick up if you run for office and try to do other jobs at the same time. We have a backlog, so let's try sharing some information in quick bursts. With more to come.
- If you missed the Bill Cosby appearance in Lakewood, it's now showing - and I mean that literally as I type this and watch it at the same time - on TV. It was filmed by Clover Park Technical College Television and will repeat at 8 a.m., 4 p.m. and midnight for the next several days. You can see it on channel 28 with Comcast and 89 with Click! Definitely worth watching.
I grabbed the photo from Picasa, from an album by Ben ... presumably Ben Sclair, and thanks to him for recording so many photos of the community.
- Next month, the Landmarks and Heritage Advisory Board will consider whether to declare the home at 11012 Interlaaken Drive SW as a city landmark. The formal designation would prevent any future homeowners from changing the building without the Landmarks board's OK. That is totally fine with the present owners, Becky and John Huber, as Becky is the president of the Lakewood Historical Society and John is the president's aide-de-camp. There are only a handful of buildings so designated, so it would be great to have one in the Interlaaken neighborhood so protected.
You'll recognize the house right away; it's the red two-story home set back on a forested lot and not that far from Idlewild Elementary.
The home belonged to contractor Fredric Cole Smith, who built it on what was then a 10-acre lot in 1914. Becky has a copy of Fredric's obituary from 1940. It's interesting that something the newspaper chose to emphasize in the obituary was that Fredric's father was Edward Slade "Skookum" Smith, an extremely prominent Tacoma businessman who worked for the Nothern Pacific Railroad. So the Smith house, now the Huber house, is yet another example of how Lakewood got built up by Tacoma's rich and famous (and their children).
- In one pile of papers was an amazingly detailed report on the 40-year history of Pierce College. There's a little bit of the info on the Pierce College Web site, but I will see if I can track down a PDF of this document, if you were like me and missed it in the mail.
There's a lot of interesting history and good photos, but what impressed me most were some comments about the future, namely, 2009: the report says that in that year, the college will see completion of a "$30 million Science and Technology Building ...featuring three pods connected by glass-covered winter gardens." And with a view of Fort Steilacoom Park, Lake Waughop, and when the weather allows, Mount Rainier. Wow!
