Saint Edward State Park – state parks quest #40

Pulling into Saint Edward State Park on a sunny spring day, our dominant impression was of yellow construction tape, fluttering in front of the entrance to a new parking garage and strung around the seminary building that is the heart of the park. Hard-hatted workers buzzed around, speaking into walkie-talkies and hauling gear. It turns out we’d shown up less than a week before the grand opening of The Lodge at Saint Edward State Park, the culmination of decades of debate about how to operate the park and preserve the iconic seminary in a financially strapped state park system.

Saint Edward Seminary

In 1925, after years of searching for the right location, Seattle Bishop Edward John O’Dea purchased land to build a Roman Catholic seminary. With views of the Cascade Range and Lake Washington from what is a high spot formed by glacial retreat, O’Dea envisioned a place for young men to train as priests. When it opened in 1931, Saint Edward was the first fully accredited seminary in the United States. It was a “minor seminary,” which at the time meant a day or, in this case, boarding school for teenage boys interested in the priesthood. 

In 1935, Saint Edward became a “major seminary,” providing formal college-level and post-undergraduate training for would-be priests. Today, a major seminary is simply called seminary.

In 1958, The Church opened Saint Thomas the Apostle Seminary, a major seminary, a quarter-mile away, and Saint Edward reverted to a minor seminary. By the mid-1970s, declining enrollment forced the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle to close Saint Edward Seminary. 

In 1977 the Church sold most of the property to the State of Washington for $7 million, keeping only Saint Thomas the Apostle Seminary and about 50 acres of land. The following year, Saint Edward became a state park.

Maintenance challenges

Washington State Parks manages 2,800 properties, comprising more than one-quarter of all state-owned structures. And one-quarter of State Parks properties are historic, requiring special care. The 80,000-square-foot Saint Edward Seminary is the largest of these. From the start, maintaining the seminary posed challenges. 

Designed by Seattle architect John Graham, Sr., known for Seattle’s Nordstrom and Macy’s buildings as well as the Dexter Horton Building on 2nd Avenue downtown, the Renaissance Revival masonry structure featured three floors of living quarters for priests and students, a prominent bell tower, and dining hall and classrooms on the ground floor. The building is a rectangular box with formal window crowns, arches, horizontal belt courses, and discreet cornice moldings (the trim where walls meet the roof), all typical features of the Renaissance Revival style of architecture.

From the time the park opened, most of the seminary building was off-limits to the public due to severe deterioration and structural hazards. The ground-floor dining hall was rented for events but could only accommodate 50 people at a time. The rest of the building was closed to public use except for a few staff offices, deemed among the most expensive offices in state government because of the cost of heating the building. State Parks considered various commercial uses to generate funds for rehabilitation and maintenance, but for decades the building sat empty except for staff. 

In 2005, Washington State Parks approached McMenamins, the Portland-based brewer, pub operator, and hotelier known for adaptively reusing historic structures, about opening a hotel/pub/conference center at the site, but nothing came of it. The same year, the Catholic Diocese of Seattle sold the 34-acre Saint Thomas Seminary property to Bastyr University, fully divesting its holdings at the site.

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Languishing

In 2007, State Parks held public hearings on the park’s future, with special attention to the deteriorating seminary. But local opposition stymied progress. The city of Kenmore, which had been incorporated less than ten years earlier, passed a zoning change to prohibit long-term alcohol sales in city parks. Some viewed the move as a response to local activists, particularly a group called Citizens for Saint Edward State Park, who wanted to forestall any commercial development at Saint Edward. The same group successfully nominated the seminary and other structures in the park to the National Register of Historic Places. 

For the next seven years, the seminary languished, slowly crumbling into further disrepair. In 2012, the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation added the structure to its Most Endangered Places list.

In 2014, the State Parks and Recreation Commission told staff either to vacate the building or find a partner to fund its restoration. The agency came close to leasing the building to a cybersecurity firm as office space, but the cost of the rehabilitation, estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, proved insurmountable.

A glimmer of hope

Then, in summer 2015, Seattle real estate developer Kevin Daniels approached State Parks about turning the seminary into a luxury hotel and conference center. Daniels was known for restoring the Starbucks Center, the Frye Art Museum, and the King Street Station, preserving historical details while turning structures into something useful for current needs, a principle called adaptive reuse. Daniels proposed to buy an adjacent waterfront property and exchange it for the seminary grounds and building. He estimated seismic stabilization and retrofitting would probably cost $14-16 million, and restoration and conversion, with attention to historic preservation, would likely run another $50 million.

Citizens for Saint Edward State Park opposed the proposal, saying they would rather tear down the building than have it converted for commercial use—a position starkly opposed to that of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation and one that contradicts historic preservation principles.

In 2017, after two years of study, hearings, and public comment, the State Parks Commission approved a 62-year lease for 5.5 acres containing the seminary building and gymnasium. In lieu of rent, Daniels Real Estate purchased 14 acres of waterfront land adjacent to the park’s northern boundary, worth $3 million, and deeded it to State Parks. The State Historic Preservation Officer supported the restoration plan, and the city of Kenmore, reversing its previous position, also approved.

The Lodge at Saint Edward State Park

When we showed up at Saint Edward State Park in late April, workers bustled outside, moving plants into place for new landscaping. Spotting an open door, we asked if we could take a peek. “Come on in!” a staff member smiled. The large Cedar + Elm restaurant was ready for its first guests. Staffers talked through final details while standing behind counter-height iceboxes, perhaps a remnant of the old seminary. Six-light chandeliers and wall sconces enhanced the light streaming through the arched windows on three sides of the grand room.

Just inside the entrance, a floor-to-ceiling mural commemorates the site’s history, from indigenous fishing to saw milling to seminary. Opposite, a sleek bar, called Father Mulligan’s Heritage Pub in honor of the seminary’s first president, offers a variety of seating options. Bar stools look out a curved bay window onto the grounds. We stood, admiring the view, when a silver-haired man in a polo shirt invited us to have a drink. I declined, feeling awkward for being in the not-yet-open hotel, when a staffer stage-whispered, “That’s the man who did all this.” We were pressed for time that day, but given another opportunity, I’d definitely take Kevin Daniels up on the offer. Mr. Adventure talked with him for a few minutes while I explored more.

Across from the restaurant, sunlight flooded through tall windows, illuminating a long hallway filled with works by emerging artists. It was immediately clear that the building’s history had been carefully preserved and spotlighted. Dark wood trim gleamed everywhere, setting off restored decorative plaster and concrete molding. Floors of polished linoleum and concrete underlay everything. 

A week after our visit, The Lodge at Saint Edward State Park opened. A $57 million renovation resulted in 84 guest rooms, two bars, a restaurant, and 9000 square feet of event space, among other amenities. The facility is managed by Columbia Hospitality, known for its luxury hotels, resorts, and high-end residences. The Lodge is, so far, a shining example of a way forward for perpetually cash-strapped State Parks, one that respects the history of a place while making it useful for the 21st century. Both the project and Kevin Daniels have won numerous historic preservation awards.

Exploring the park

The seminary is the jewel in Saint Edward’s crown, but there’s much more to the park. We headed to The Grotto, a mortared stone altar designed for contemplation and prayer that’s tucked into a hillside. With its lovely landscaping and private feel, it’s a popular spot for weddings.

At Saint Edward, manual work was a central part of seminary education. Seminarians built trails, including the Seminary Trail, a former logging road that leads from the seminary building to the lakeshore and a swim area complete with dock and slide. We followed the Seminary Trail downhill along the narrow, graveled road, past ghostly stumps home to trees that are themselves impressively large. The land was logged in the late 1800s, but a second-growth forest was well established by the time O’Dea bought the property in 1925. 

At the bottom, a rare publicly accessible view of northern Lake Washington spread out before us, picnic tables inviting visitors to stay awhile. The swim area and dock were located here, although all that remains are some rocks that may have been part of the structure. The Beach Trail continues along the lakeshore for about a thousand feet, then turns uphill, winding through the forest along the North Trail, which leads back to the seminary grounds. 

From there, we turned onto the Entrance Trail and walked out to the park entrance, now jazzed up with a new sign for The Lodge at Saint Edward State Park in addition to the classic State Parks sign. We headed back to our car past a large ball field and playground. 

Who was Saint Edward?

On the way, I asked Mr. Adventure, who spent part of his younger years in Catholic school, about Saint Edward. “I don’t know,” he replied, giving me the bemused look which I interpret to mean, “Just because I was raised Catholic doesn’t mean I have the saints memorized.”

Saint Edward turns out to be quite the historical figure. There are two Saint Edwards, the Confessor and the Martyr. This seminary is named for Saint Edward the Confessor (the Martyr was his uncle, as it happens). 

King Edward and the Norman Conquest

Edward was one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England, ruling for 24 years. In 1042, the first year of his reign, he commanded the construction of a new church for royal burials. Westminster Abbey was consecrated in 1065, a few days before the king died, and has gone through a number of iterations since then. Edward is entombed in an elaborate shrine there. 

King Edward appears in the first panel of the 225-foot-long Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 and England’s transition from Anglo-Saxon to Norman rule. Dispute over who would succeed Edward as monarch led to the war and William the Conqueror’s eventual victory. 

Canonization

King Edward was an improbable saint, canonized for political rather than religious reasons. After the king’s death, the prior of Westminster Abbey, hoping to raise the church’s profile, began to campaign for Edward’s elevation to sainthood. After a contentious papal election in 1159 was resolved with help from King Henry II, new Pope Alexander III canonized Edward in gratitude. The label “Confessor” indicates he lived a saintly life but was not a martyr who died for his religious beliefs. Indeed, while King Edward attended church regularly in the second half of his reign, he also reputedly enjoyed hunting and was prone to fits of violent temper. He is the only English Anglo-Saxon king to be canonized.

A crown and a state park

The tradition of coronation regalia, the ceremonial items used when a new monarch is crowned, began with King Edward. A number of important items are named for him. 

If you’re a fan of Netflix’s The Crown or the English royal family, you will probably recognize one of Saint Edward’s most enduring and recognizable legacies: Saint Edward’s Crown. Made of solid gold and encrusted with 444 jewels, it weighs a hefty five pounds (put a bag of flour on your head and see how that feels). The crown has been used at the coronation of every English monarch since the 13th century, including that of Queen Elizabeth II. The original was destroyed by order of Oliver Cromwell in 1649, but the current version is similar and displayed in the Jewel House in the Tower of London. 

And if that’s not cool enough, there’s also Saint Edward’s Sapphire, the most prominent jewel in the Imperial State Crown. After the coronation, a new monarch swaps Saint Edward’s Crown for the Imperial State Crown, which only (!) weighs three pounds. The Imperial State Crown is also traditionally worn by the monarch for the state opening of Parliament and other formal events. 

Saint Edward is everywhere in the coronation, really. The new monarch sits on Saint Edward’s Chair, a high-backed wood seat that is also called the Coronation Chair. It looks uncomfortable. Saint Edward’s staff, a gold scepter, is carried during the procession.

Saint Edward honored

The Lodge at Saint Edward State Park is full of nods to the king/saint, to the site’s days as a seminary, and to its earlier history. Order a Confessor’s Old-Fashioned in Father Mulligan’s Heritage Pub, made with bourbon and smoked rosemary syrup. Hold a meeting in a room named for seminary architect Graham or shingle mill operator McMasters. Or simply wander the grounds and trails, enjoying the sounds of birds singing in the forest and water lapping on the lake shore. Whether you seek a luxe weekend escape, a rousing softball game, or a peaceful walk in the woods, Saint Edward State Park is ready.

Fast facts about Saint Edward State Park

• 326-acre, day-use park, open year-round
• 3000’ freshwater shoreline on Lake Washington
• Discover Pass required, $10 daily or, for a very reasonable $30, purchase an annual pass
• The Grotto event space available for rent
• restrooms
• picnic tables, playground
• hiking, mountain biking, playfield, horseback riding
• boating, waterskiing, swimming, fishing, shellfishing (license required)
• park brochure
• park map

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Land Acknowledgment

Saint Edward State Park occupies the traditional, unceded lands of the Suquamish, Duwamish, and Stillaguamish tribes, Coast Salish peoples who have lived and travelled here since time immemorial and who continue to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage.

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