Robert Smith, owner of the Auburn Dance Center at 306 Auburn Ave., picked up a plaque last week presented by King County’s Historic Preservation Program during a ceremony in North Bend.
One day soon that overdue plaque will mark his building, the old Carnegie Library, as an official King County landmark, an honor it acquired on April 11, 1995.
Smith’s only regret was that his late wife, Mary Margaret Smith, wasn’t there to see it happen. It was she, he said, who fought for decades to get the building placed on the National Registry of Historic Places, and lived to see it happen in 1982.
Because the building is on that register, it cannot be torn down. Its place on that list makes it available for grants that help preserve an aging structure Smith could not otherwise afford to maintain. And that all helped earn it the King County landmark status.
“Mary Margaret really loved this old building,” Smith said of his wife and partner in the dance studio. She died in 2006.
The couple acquired the building in 1964 after the City of Auburn constructed a new library, and it has been in private ownership ever since.
This past April, King County’s 4Culture Landmark Rehabilitation Program Awards listed the old Carnegie building among 14 projects worthy of grant funding. The $6,178 award will pay for the painting, repair or replacement of the outside windows sills, sashes, doors and door frames.
“The contractor that is going to do it has done historical work, and he said he is going to spray wash the bricks at the same time. That is absolutely appreciated,” Smith said. “To be honest with you, I couldn’t afford to do it. I am not teaching anymore because I am retired. There’s not a lot of income coming into the studio.”
Once the work is finished in July, Smith expects to hang the plaque on the front face of the building, just left of the main doors.
The library opened in 1914 on land donated by the pioneer Ballard family’s original claim. Andrew Carnegie’s nationwide library philanthropy donated $9,000 toward the building’s construction, and prominent Seattle architect David Myers designed it. It reflects the restrained neo-classical design and simple rectangular massing of similar Carnegie libraries constructed throughout the nation during the era.
Smith recalled how he and his wife acquired the building.
“We were looking for a larger building for the dance studio,” Smith said. “We were renting it, and the Ballard family who owned it wanted to sell it. Their intention was to raze the whole thing. They weren’t going to keep this building, they wanted to put up an office or medical building. My wife fought tooth and nail to buy it. In those days we didn’t have any money. We found one banker who believed in us because we taught his kid and that’s how we got financing. And it was just a quirk. We got our bid in just under the wire or we wouldn’t have it today.”
The old Auburn Post Office, another Carnegie building, which served until recently as a branch of the King County Department of Health, was honored with a plaque, too. The county is in discussions with the City of Auburn over the City’s possible acquisition of the building, which is now vacant.
