60s Real Estate Sign Says a lot About Mercer Island of Yesteryear

Way back in the '50s, two young graduates of the vaunted Harvard School of Architecture co-joined their two considerable talents to form a new firm- Bassetti and Morse Architects AIA. At that time I met Jack Morse at UW Architecture where he was on of my professors. Fred Bassetti did "modern" homes for the Seattle Times/American Institute of Architecture "Home of the Month" of which I later was the HoM Chairman for a number of years.

At that time, forested Mercer Island was largely undeveloped with a small shopping center at the North end, with the central artery- "Island Crest" dwindling to just two lanes at NE 40th Street.

Builder Theo Caldwell recognized the potential of these home-designing architects who could help him attract the young, well-educated families moving into the NorthWest (from elsewhere East) with Mercer Island an obvious choice of where to live close to established Seattle and burgeoning Bellevue- surrounded by nature. He was very successful- a fact soon noted by a number of profit-oriented "spec" builders who started building what soon came to be known as "Bellevue Chateaus".

Fortunately there are still a lot of nice authentic NorthWest Contemporary homes on Mercer Island.