Buildings & Sites
Coutts Building
July 1999 photo by David Bangs
Coutts Building: 99 Front Street N.
See
Map
This building has housed many Issaquah businesses since it was constructed,
replacing the earlier Coutts Building, in 1913.
From the 1998 "Issaquah Historic Property Inventory":
History
Cornelius Coutts returned from Alaska and purchased the Tolle
Anderson Front Street business lot for $800. Coutts and his wife Eva started a
dry goods store in Issaquah in a small, false front, frame building. On Monday,
December 5, 1910, when he opened his new store, he
advertised suits for $4.00 - $6.50 and wool overcoats at $6.00
Within two years the business had grown enough to warrant
moving the little frame building to make way for a two story brick structure.
The first story was used as the clothing store, and the second story was rented
out for living quarters. The initial cost was $10,000.
Mr. Coutts operated his dry goods business until 1928 when Mr.
C.C. Caveness of Centralia purchased it and changed the name to the New York
Store. In 1932, Jack Kastle turned the lower floor into a grocery store. Four
years later the management changed once again and it became Tony's and Johnny's
Corner Market.
After 1947, various businesses occupied the lower floor, while
the upstairs continued to serve as apartments, although at intervals
professional offices were on the second floor. Mrs. Eva Coutts was still living
in the upstairs apartments in 1963.
In 1972 the Redmoor Corporation bought and restored the Coutts
building
Building Description
The Coutts building is a two story, brick structure 20' wide along Front
Street and 120' deep along Alder. The building takes advantage of its prominent
downtown corner location. This is a modem commercial building in both structure
and style. The basic structure - a concrete foundation and masonry piers -
allows for a modem glassy comer storefront for display and sales. This
proportion and refined brickwork detailing of this structure combine to make
this building the strongest example of commercial architecture still extant in
lssaquah's downtown. The building's form expresses its function: a glass
commercial storefront for sales activity on the first floor along the primary street front
and residential scaled windows on the second floor for the apartments (now
offices).
The first floor is constructed of continuous brickwork in a stretcher bond
pattern. The second floor structure has brick piers, flush to the first floor,
which are infilled with recessed panels of brickwork in a common bond pattern;
decorative stepped courses and corbel trim the top. Above these are a plain
entablature of five courses and a plain recessed parapet; the roof is flat. Six
bays of recessed brick run the 120' length of the north elevation. Some replaced
brickwork closely matches the original at the storefront along the sidewalk at
the east elevation.
In addition to the major store entry on the east, the north elevation has two
smaller scaled entries. In addition to the storefront opening. the building has
two pairs of tall 3-lite windows on the east facade and six pairs of 3-Iite
windows along the north; the middle pane of each window is an awning type. No
windows in this building are original. Canvas awnings have been installed over
the storefront and above each of two second story window pairs along Front
Street. The building is in good condition and is a major contributor to the
scale and quality of the streetscape along the main downtown street.
Bibliographic References
Issaquah Historical Society files, King County Inventory completed by Kay
Bullis, 1977
See More Buildings & Sites
| 
