Des Moines’ north star, The Landmark on the Sound, is heading south

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Special to (c) The Seattle Times
Seen from the air, the former Masonic Home of Washington in Des Moines has a bulls-eye view of Maury Island. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
IT SOUNDS LIKE a plot out of a gothic novel: an old building, a product of the Jazz Age, erected by an ancient brotherhood to house its aging members, targeted for demolition by developers. In this book (or movie), there would be hauntings, of course: angry, chisel-wielding ghosts in Masonic aprons rattling the chain-link fence that now cages the Masonic Home of Washington, now known as The Landmark on the Sound.

To find the place, head south on Marine View Drive through Des Moines, a sleepy little seaside town, picturesque with local seafood restaurants and condos, every window that can manage it staring out at the sea. Just past the marina, you find yourself in a geographic ghost, a neighborhood once considered a township of its own called Zenith, now incorporated into South Des Moines but still graced with its own moniker on Google Maps. And in this memory of a place rises a building that might soon become a memory itself.

The five-story, roughly 118,000-square-foot edifice was constructed by the Freemasons in 1926-27 as a retirement home for elderly members of the brotherhood: a building built by the world’s quintessential builders to house their elders in their twilight years. The upper floors boast a view of the foggy South Sound and the (islands) beyond, so often layered with mist, like a baroque theater set for some grand Masonic mystery play.

The last residents were relocated in 2004 with an eye to building renovation, but the Great Recession skunked those plans, and the place was rented out as an event center until the Masons ultimately sold it in 2019.

NUMBERS:

  • 1926-27: year the Landmark on the Sound was built
  • 5: number of stories in the building
  • 117,930: square footage of the building
  • 1,319,850: square footage of the campus
  • $11.5 million: price of the 2019 sale
  • 1982: year Zenith was incorporated into Des Moines
  • 1853: year the first Washington Masonic Lodge was founded
  • 1858: year the Grand Lodge of Washington was founded
  • 10,437: number of registered Masons in Washington State as of 2021
  • Supposedly as many as 21 out of the 56: number of Masons that signed the Declaration of Independence
  • roughly 32,000: population of Des Moines

Picturesque old abandoned buildings exist in our imaginations as much as they do in the physical world, and the Landmark, with its carved woodwork and gabled windows, evokes those haunted mansions described by Stephen King or Shirley Jackson. It is impossible to stare at its unblinking windows and not wait breathlessly for a ghostly figure to peek out and wave or wag its finger at you.

Though it now sits among equally tall condo developments and apartments, once upon a time, the building rose like a castle on the hill overlooking the water, virtually alone in its splendor, staring out at the Sound with the stately dignity of its purpose and its architecture, a point of pride and a lodestar for locals.

“We called it ‘the landmark’ before it was officially called The Landmark,” says photographer and longtime Normandy Park/Des Moines resident Douglas Orton. “When you were out on the boat and the weather was crappy, that’s how you found Des Moines to get back home. It was how we got our bearings.”

As of this printing, the building’s future is in flux; the holding company, Zenith Properties (owned by a Seattle-based development company called Tarragon), has applied for a demolition permit despite community objection, petitions and public outcry. Like the town of Zenith, the Landmark could become a ghost, its presence lingering on maps and in memories, replaced, most likely, by something depressingly ordinary.

To Chris Moore, executive director of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, its loss would be a travesty.

“It’s unconscionable,” says Moore, “to think of this building being demolished.”

Tantri Wija is a Seattle-based freelance writer. Reach her at scratchtheblog.com. Ken Lambert is a Seattle Times staff photographer: klambert@seattletimes.com.