If you’ve ever dreamt of living in a 14-bedroom historic home built for a Bavarian-American philanthropist in 1903, now is your chance. The house is currently owned by non-profit Full Life Care and has been operating as a memory-care facility for the past 12 years. Full Life Care is selling for financial reasons and in response to competition from larger advanced care facilities, reports PSBJ.
The home was originally built in 1903 for Caroline Rosenberg Kline Galland, a noted Jewish philanthropist. A native of Bavaria, Caroline Rosenberg was first married to Louis Kline, owner of a Seattle clothing firm. He died in 1892, and she then married Bonham Galland, a retired San Francisco merchant. She put her wealth to good use and devoted all of her time, money, and energy to improving the lives of the poor and elderly.
Four years prior to her own death, she commissioned architect Max Umbrecht to design the home at 1605 17th Ave. Born in Syracuse, NY in 1872, Umbrecht spent his early life in a neighborhood filled with German immigrants from Württemberg, Baden, Bavaria and Prussia. He was one of six children and lived with his parents until he moved to Seattle in 1900. He learned the trade from his father Charles Umbrecht, a contractor and builder from Germany.
The two and a half story Georgian Revival house has been renovated over the years but still features Umbrecht’s classical fireplace mantelpieces, a window seat on the stairway, and a variety of columns, moldings and wainscoting, according to the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.
Although the 11 residents of the Full Life Care home will be finding new accommodations upon the home’s sale, Galland’s legacy of kindness for the aging will live on. When Galland died in 1907, she left her estate of $1.5 million to numerous charities, including the Caroline Kline Galland Home for the Aged and Feeble Poor, which still operates in Seward Park. Her wish, “that it may bring to the lives of the aged men and women… the greatest degree of contentment and happiness in their declining years,” reports HistoryLink.
You can live in the former home of this lovely civic character for $3.6 million. For the full listing click here.
