At The Varsity Boat Club - Research at The University of Washington

From the Tyee, 1938, "new shellhouse
next to SAE house"

Pierce County Reads has selected The Boys In The Boat, by Daniel James Brown, as their 2015 book.  The esprit of the Husky Crew was focused on their athletic achievement, and their memorabilia and records reflect a discarding of their on 17^th N.E. housing as not pertaining to their meaning.  While Daniel James Brown has developed more of the life stories of the Husky Crew Team that won in the 1936 Olympics, he does not mention much about their housing.  Because the Olympics were discontinued because of the war, the Husky Crew Team remained the World Champions for years.

From the Seattle City Directory

     The Boys In The Boat, by Daniel James Brown,  refers to a rented house on 17^th as the Varsity Boat Club, describes crew members playing a piano in the parlor there.  Those sources are described in the Notes as existing completely on-line.  At an on-line source the complete notes are to appear soon.   So diaries or letters must have described the rented house.   I researched the Varsity Boat Club house-renting earlier and described a rented house on 17^th in a longer prose poem included at Salt River Review.   A house called “The Alamo” earlier, then called “The Moor’s Club” becomes “The Varsity Boat Club” in 1938, in Seattle City Directories, and after 1938 it remains at 4518 17^th N.E. for years, including the years of World War Two.

                The “rented house” referred to was not the only rented house of the Varsity Boat Club.  And a long-term rented house had been where my father’s brother had begun at the University of Washington.  And had sadly, not continued.  Below, I want to quote from my essay, which I wrote in the third person: 

Crew members Clown Around
for a rare Tyee Candid at the Club

     With other men of "The Moor's Club," the portrait of Jens Jensen looks from the pages of the 1924 Tyee. He was Laura Jensen's uncle, her father's oldest brother.  Jens Jensen's group was about to be in the trenches in France when World War One ended.  Basic conditions of daily life for the soldiers were harsh, he had influenza in the epidemic and, like many, contracted tuberculosis.  He was cured. 

Laura Jensen's father last saw his brother on a visit to Cushman Hospital, in Tacoma, in 1923, when Jens' tuberculosis symptoms reoccurred.  From Tacoma Jens traveled to Idaho and New Mexico to Veteran's Administration hospitals.

          In New Mexico Jens married a clerical worker.  Jens always was good to Ella and made her happy, their daughter explains in a letter.  Jens Jensen died in 1932.  Years later, their daughter finished college on the East Coast…

          Theodore Jensen continued his 1923 job as a houseboy at the Tolo House. When he walked just up a hill and along 17th toward the formal entrance of the university, Theodore Jensen passed by "The Moor's Club." He worked his way through pharmacy school as a cook on Standard Oil ships to Alaska and Mexico.

          The house was Craftsman style, with craftsman doorways, brackets, design, influenced by the Mediterranean.  At the Puget Sound Regional Archives in Bellevue, a form lists its forty-three rooms - two in the basement, eleven on the first floor, sixteen on the second floor, fourteen on the third floor.  There was one brick fireplace.  It was built in 1908 and remodeled in 1910.  There were one thousand square feet of tile work - floors, walls of tile.  The tile work was inspired by Morocco.