Garth Stein wrote his bestselling book The Art of Racing in the Rain, two other novels, and a play in his 1924 Mount Baker Colonial Revival home over the 25 years he lived there. But not always in the same place. “I moved around as I wrote: downstairs when I needed to concentrate, upstairs when I needed to dream,” he says. “This house gives the imagination room to wander.”
Now, anyone else who would like to have that room for their imagination to wander could: The four-bedroom, 3.5-bath house just a block from Mount Baker Beach is on the market for $2,450,000.
John and Marianne Colcock built the house during Seattle’s 1920s building boom, part of a roster of early residents that reads like a roster of Seattle industry: furnaces, gravel and sand, and steamships. And it has long harbored creativity: the Colcocks’ 16-year-old son built an 18-foot cabin cruiser in the backyard, kicking off a career in boat design and racing that included helping make hydroplane racing part of Seafair.
Much of the old house remains intact, like the exterior brick facade and columned front porch. In the entry hall, with its stately staircase, leaded glass windows flank the front door, while the living room fireplace retains its original Batchelder tile. On both sides of the hearth, doors open to Juliet balconies.
A main floor remodel with designer Rocky Rochon kept the basic layout, but widened doorways and knocked out a kitchen wall to create open sightlines and spread light. The kitchen makes the cook the star of the show, with a Viking range, two sink stations, custom cabinetry, and lengthy butcher block counters. A casual bar overlooks the adjacent formal dining room, where custom cabinetry surrounds a set of doors to the backyard. The connected outdoor spaces are petite, yet inviting, with a vine-covered trellis over the grill station and patios tucked into the gardens rising up the hill.
The house sits on a steep, sloping lot, towering some 40 feet above the street. “It has always felt like a place apart,” says Stein, and that really comes through upstairs. The four bedrooms, one at each corner, have large windows, mostly looking right into the trees. Both full bathrooms, one in the hall and one in the primary suite, were redesigned by Marianne Simon and won a LUXE design award in 2018. They skew classic, with pretty patterned marble floors, tile wainscot, and glamorous metal vanities. Not to be upstaged, the dressing room in the primary suite shines with custom-painted storage, a wallpapered ceiling, and views of Lake Washington.
This being the home of a writer, there are not one, but two different libraries. Downstairs, the full daylight basement has been finished with a third bathroom, laundry, and a living area set around a second fireplace and lined with a row of bookshelves. That leads to a separate office—Stein says he wrote downstairs when he needed to concentrate—with more big windows and an exterior door that feeds into the front entry steps.
The second library is less expected: a nook off the living room painted a vibrant red, from the shelves to the ceiling’s crown molding and window casings, with peekaboo views of Lake Washington through the trees. Just the kind of inspirational, fundamentally Seattle setting that inspires creativity. As Steins says, “Somehow, the house always offered the right room, the right light, the right view for the work I was doing.”
Listing Fast Facts
Size: 3,970 square feet, 4 bedroom/4 bath…