Alki Homestead
West Seattle's Historic Fir Lodge
Alki Homestead restaurant off Alki Beach, constructed with Douglas fir logs in 1903 by Fred L. Fehren as a country retreat called the Fir Lodge for Seattle soap magnate William J. Bernard and his wife Gladys Barnett. Today the building is one of only three surviving log buildings in Seattle, all three in West Seattle. The Southwest Seattle Historical Society's Log House Museum was originally built as the carriage house for the Fir Lodge. The third (not pictured) is Seaview Hall above Andover Place, noted for logs placed vertically instead of horizontally. All three were constructed circa 1903-1905.
Finding Alki Beach too far from Seattle's social scene and school for daughter Marie Alberta, Bernard sold the Fir Lodge to the Seattle Auto Club, which used the building as their first clubhouse from 1907 to 1911. The building served for a time as a residence and boarding house and even an antique store. The Alki Homestead Restaurant occupied the building in 1950.
Designated a Seattle historical landmark in 1995, the structure suffered a devastating fire in 2009. After ten years of uncertainty Mercer Island real estate investor Dennis Schilling, who purchased the building in 2014, finished restoration to reopen the historic structure in 2019 as the Il Nido (The Nest) Italian restaurant.
Southwest Seattle Historical Society's Log House Museum, corner of 61st Avenue SW at SW Stevens Street, was the carriage house for the Alki Homestead Restaurant. The second floor was the hay loft. Following annexation of West Seattle in 1907, the City of Seattle platted the current street grid. The carriage house found itself in the middle of Stevens Street. The building was dismantled log by log and reconstructed as a residence on its current location.
Totem pole standing sentinel is a 1966 replica of a British Columbia totem pole raised in West Seattle's Belvedere View Point Park on Admiral Way in 1939. This replica totem, carved from a Schmitz Park log in 1966 by Boeing engineers Michael Morgan and Bob Fleischman, stood at Belvedere View Point Park from 1966 to 2006. Restored 2012-2014, the totem was raised in 2014 at the Log House Museum.