Fremont Coffee Company at 459 North 36th Street and Charlie’s Queer Books next door at 465 started out as houses built by a brother and sister.
Their families lived side by side for decades before either building sold a latte or a paperback, according to research shared by local historian Valarie Bunn.
Frank Rosche, a lumber broker, built 459 by 1904 after moving to Seattle from Minneapolis with his wife, Alice, and her mother, Mary Louise Bunker.
“I wish I could say for sure what caused them to move to Seattle,” Bunn wrote, “but it’s not unusual for people to just suddenly move to Seattle!”
Next door, Alice’s brother Artemis Bunker settled at 465 with his Swedish-born wife, Belle, and worked as a barber.
Families settling near one another was common in early Seattle and Bunn has documented the same pattern elsewhere in the city.
Alice and Artemis were born in Iowa, where their father, Allison Bunker, died of disease in 1864 while serving in the Civil War, leaving Mary Louise a widow at 21. She had married Allison at 14.
“I can’t imagine how Mary Louise Bunker, the mom, sustained herself financially after his death,” Bunn wrote.
The answer was dressmaking, a trade Mary Louise carried to Seattle and, Bunn suspects, passed down. Belle Bunker was also listed as a dressmaker on the 1930 census.
Mary Louise lived with the Rosches at 459 until her death in 1919. Frank outlived his whole generation of both households, dying at 459 in 1939.
Victoria Church, a widow and president of the Pioneer Women of the State of Washington, took over the house next and stayed until her death in 1971.
Next door, Artemis died in 1938, the year after Belle. Neither couple had children. The sparse newspaper mentions Bunn found were of women’s meetings hosted there.
“I am quite amazed that the two houses, 465 and 459, were ‘siblings,’ just like their occupants,” Bunn wrote.
The Rosches and Bunkers never made much of Fremont’s public record beyond a handful of newspaper mentions and a name on a deed. What’s left of them is written into the block itself: two houses still standing shoulder to shoulder on North 36th, more than a century after a brother and sister decided to be neighbors.
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