The Wagner Houseboat and The Center for Wooden Boats

Designated a Seattle Historic Landmark in 2021, The Center for Wooden Boats is a hands-on maritime museum and working boat dock. The museum offers courses, an exhibit gallery, tours, and boat rentals, with free public sailing excursions on Lake Union once a month. In the gallery, rotating exhibits explore the history of boating and the maritime industry of the Pacific Northwest. The site also features historic floating structures, including The Wagner Houseboat, also known as The Old Boathouse. Originally built as a summer house on Lake Washington prior to 1912, it is one of the few remaining examples of Seattle's earliest floating homes. The Wagner Houseboat was moved to its present location at Lake Union in 1938 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Established in 1978, the Center for Wooden Boats (CWB) is a hands-on museum dedicated to the Pacific Northwest's maritime history, including the preservation and restoration of traditional small watercraft. Since 1983, the CWB has been based at Waterway 4, with docks and a waterfront park located on the southern edge of Seattle's Lake Union. Historic structures on site include a floating boat livery building or boat shop, an oar house, and a pavilion, collectively designated as a City of Seattle Historic Landmark in 2021. A new museum building was also constructed near the water's edge for hosting exhibits, classes, programs, and events.

The Center for Wooden Boats offers instructional sailing programs and boatbuilding workshops. Partnering with Chesapeake Light Craft, workshops include constructing small sailing and rowing vessels such as jimmy skiffs, northeast dories, shearwater kayaks, dinghies (Eastport prams), and Annapolis wherries. The Boatwright in Residence Apprenticeship Program provides opportunities for new boatbuilders to further hone their skills. In 2021, apprentices restored a 21-foot wooden sloop that had been built in 1936 by the Blanchard Boat Company on Lake Union. The restoration took three years and involved replacing cedar planks, repairing the deck, re-caulking, and building a new mast. The CWB maintains four workshops on Lake Union for building and repairing wooden boats.

Also located at Waterway 4, the Wagner Houseboat is a historic floating home built prior to 1912 and used for summer residence on Lake Washington. It was transported to its present location at Lake Union in 1938, eventually becoming the first floating home in Seattle to receive landmark status by the city's Preservation Board. The Wagner Houseboat was named for Richard and Colleen Wagner, who acquired the structure in the mid-20th century and operated a boat livery business on site from 1968 to 1980. As the Wagners established a non-profit organization dedicated to maritime history, their floating home and boat shop were renamed "The Center for Wooden Boats." Their houseboat was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Floating homes are integral to Seattle's history, reflecting independence as well as community. In the early 1900s, there were three times as many floating homes in the city as there were by the end of the century, with only 450 remaining in the 1980s. Some began as summer homes for affluent residents, with waterfront dance pavilions and cable cars connecting resort areas with the city center. Others served as primary housing for loggers, millworkers, and fishermen, with the rustic structures comprised of little more than a shack atop floating log rafts, barges, or abandoned hulls. The first colony of Seattle fisherman who lived in floating homes moored them on public piers in Elliott Bay, but they were banished by the city in 1908. The colony then moved into the Duwamish River and resided there for many years, including during the Great Depression in the 1930s when the number of Seattle's floating homes increased.

Industrial, commercial, and residential development at Lake Union accelerated after a shipping canal was proposed to connect Lake Washington with Puget Sound. Located within the city, the relatively small Lake Union is situated between the two larger bodies of water, and the shipping canal was completed in 1917. In addition, local civic boosters of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (the 1909 World's Fair event held in Seattle) had convinced the State Legislature to sell off private lots around the lake to promote the event. As houseboat dwellers came to reside at Lake Union, a new community took shape, reflecting a continuation of the heyday of Seattle's floating homes. Today, the Center for Wooden Boats shares the city's maritime heritage while offering free monthly Public Sailing events on Lake Union so that visitors can experience this history firsthand.

CWB Landmarking, https://www.cwb.org/cwb-landmarking. Accessed June 29th, 2023. https://www.cwb.org/cwb-landmarking.

Free Programs, The Center for Wooden Boats. Accessed June 29th, 2023. https://www.cwb.org/free-programs.

Home, The Center for Wooden Boats. Accessed June 29th, 2023. https://www.cwb.org/.

"The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition", University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections. Accessed June 30th, 2023. https://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcollections/collections/exhibits/ayp.

"The Center for Wooden Boats", City of Seattle, Landmarks Preservation Board. May 26th, 2021. Accessed June 29th, 2023. https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/Neighborhoods/HistoricPreservation/Landmarks/LandmarksPreservationBoard/MeetingDocuments/CWB_SR.pdf.

"Washington SP Wagner Houseboat: Nomination Form, National Register of Historic Places", National Archives. February 19th, 1982. Accessed June 29th, 2023. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75612432.