The Arsove Family home, at 2035 E. Newton Street, is for sale, and the Arsove children have written a lovely piece about the history of the family. Although the home will be changing owners, the spirit of the Arsoves will live on in Montlake through their efforts to keep our neighborhood a great place to live.
If the Walls Could Talk – by Priscilla Arsove
This house is the former home of Maynard and Germaine Arsove and their four daughters. Maynard, a mathematics professor at the University of Washington, first saw the home in 1959 and proclaimed to his wife, “Germaine, I’ve found our dream home!” Indeed the house stayed in the family for 58 years hence.
Maynard and Germaine became pillars of the Montlake community and both contributed immensely to its improvement. Maynard became president of the Montlake Community Club in 1968, a pivotal time in the community’s history. The proposed R.H. Thomson Expressway, a freeway that would have run roughly a mile parallel to I-5, was looming. It would have destroyed thousands of homes in its 15-mile path, including many homes along 26th Avenue E. in lower Montlake. More than a dozen homes in the area that is now the Arboretum Pinetum were removed by 1965 to make way for the freeway. For years the “Ramps to Nowhere” have stood as a reminder of the freeway that never happened.
By 1969, communities across Seattle had coalesced in opposition to the R.H. Thomson Expressway and Maynard became president of Citizens Against the R.H. Thomson (CARHT), a grassroots organization dedicated to stopping this freeway. Countless CARHT meetings and fundraisers were held in the Arsoves’ living room. After an intensive, three-year effort, Seattle voters defeated the R.H. Thomson and the Bay Freeway (which would have run along the shores of South Lake Union) in 1972 referendums.
During his term as president of the Montlake Community Club, Maynard led fundraising efforts to convert what had been an unkempt plot of land at 20th Ave. E. and E. Louisa streets to the beautifully landscaped triangle it is today. Germaine, for her part, led the Club’s “Beautification Committee” that helped arrange for planting of numerous trees throughout the community, converting streets with barren parking strips to tree-lined streets some 40+ years later.
bill mccord says
I’ve always admired the Arsove family, especially how magnanimous and inclusive it has been –and continues to be. Sense of place/community pervaded the many contributions the family proffered. Not only does the Arsove home serve as an enduring reminder of neighborliness, but also as a symbolic cauldron of citizen action. Both Maynard and Germaine exemplified the best ways to magnify human potential–and Priscilla, with Anna Rudd’s enabling contributions, have figured out a way to transform what the home represents into a living legacy.
BTW, some of my fondest memories of mini-conferencing with Maynard stem from our impromptu encounters as we crossed bicycling routes on campus; he had a unique ability to shift from academic mathematics to gritty chats about grassroots community actions:)
Freya Skarin says
I loved it when Germaine sat and sold flowers on my street corner of Boyer and Lynn. It made ours a REAL NEIGHBORHOOD. Oh, I so miss them.
Freya Skarin says
I came out of the math department also, and my EX was a math professor there too.
Patti Gorman says
I worked on the
Community Club with Maynard and Germaine and remember them fondly. Really, really good people.
Kenneth Comstock says
That house is really beautiful—I think it would be the “dream house” for many people today! Hopefully, whoever gets it will carry on the tradition of the Arsove Family and all the wonderful things they did for the community!
I think it has “officially” gone on the market and the pictures associated with the listing are really beautiful—I think the first Open House is this Thursday and I am going to look at it in person—–I wish we had had the yard when our Boys were younger!