PORT TOWNSEND — Port Townsend invites the public to step back into a quieter time for the holidays and experience the simple joys of the season with a holiday parlor tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
Tickets are $15 and may be purchased at the first stop or online at tinyurl.com/PDN-Parlor-tour.
Tours are self-guided, starting at the Old Consulate Inn at 313 Walker St:
Old Consulate Inn — This property is also known as the Frank Hastings house.
Hastings was the second son of Port Townsend founders Lauren and Lucinda Hastings.
He arrived in Port Townsend as a boy and went on to pursue many vocations, including serving in the second senate of the new state of Washington in 1891.
The house was built in 1889 across from the courthouse but wasn’t completed until 1907.
It features a beautiful curving stairway and elegant parlor decorated for holiday festivities and featuring a baby grand piano and nautical portal, now set with stained glass.
O’Rear House — Built in 1891 as a carriage house, windmill and barn for the F. W. Hastings House next door, W. O’Rear had the entire structure repositioned to its current aspect facing the water.
It has been remodeled from a carriage house to a Victorian home.
Although the exterior was completed in 1891 and is distinctly Victorian, the interior was finished at the time the Arts and Crafts movement was gaining momentum.
As a result, the house has one foot in the 19th Century and the other in the 20th. It is furnished with a mix of furnishing from both eras.
Griffiths House — James W. Griffiths was a seafaring entrepreneur and a partner in the Port Townsend firm of Griffiths, Bridges & Stetson, brokering to more than 300 ships of both domestic and foreign registry.
He arrived in Port Townsend in 1888 and prospered during its boom period.
His house on Morgan Hill was completed in 1890 at a cost of $5,500. When the Port Townsend economy collapsed, Griffiths reportedly left the town “stone broke” to renew his fortune elsewhere.
The second owners bought the house before 1900 for several hundred dollars.
Commander’s Beach House — The Commander’s Beach House was built in 1934 when Fort Worden, Fort Flagler, Fort Casey and Old Fort Townsend were built.
The house was intended as the residence for the commanding medical officer of the U.S. Quarantine Station maintained at Point Hudson.
Over the years, as the property changed hands, this gracious home has been occupied by a number of Coast Guard, Navy and Army commanding officers and their families.
It was decommissioned in 1955 and has been maintained as a bed and breakfast for the past 20 years.
Bishop Victorian Hotel — This three-story brick building was erected in 1891 as a freight storage facility by William Bishop Sr., one of the more storied pioneers in Jefferson County history.
The building was designed by architect Charles Packard and built at a cost of $15,000. Standing sentinel at the base of the bluff, the Bishop has had several incarnations as businesses have ebbed and flowed through the years, including a carriage and buggy factory at the turn of the century, an attorney’s office, and even housing the Port Townsend Soda Works from 1911 through 1920.
