Miniature house is home for the holidays at MOHAI
Dec 27, 2017, 6:46 AM | Updated: 10:13 am
After a long absence, the miniature Hammons House is back this holiday season at the Museum of History & Industry.
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It was put away five years ago as the museum prepared to move from its longtime home in Montlake to its new location at Lake Union Park.
The diminutive house was commissioned back in the 1940s by a local woman named Claire Hammons. It was designed by Seattle architect Joseph Coté in the “Colonial Revival” style and measures roughly four feet long by three feet high, and about three feet from front to back. Coté also designed a regular-size house that the Hammons lived in on Queen Anne Hill for decades.
One of the coolest things about the Hammons House that’s now back on display at MOHAI is a volunteer named Robert Sondheim who has decorated it for Christmas every year beginning in 1974. As a very young man, Sondheim helped Mrs. Hammons with the decorations that first year back in 1974. After that – just one year of guidance – he was on his own.
“She said, ‘I just can’t do this anymore,’” Sondheim said. Beginning in 1975, he began installing the decorations on his own. Mrs. Hammons was in her 90s when she passed away – not long after handing off the Hammons House holiday decoration torch to Robert Sondheim.
What exactly does Sondheim add to the Hammons House to decorate it for the holidays?
“A Christmas tree and packages. There’s a nativity scene over the fireplace in the living room, [and] that’s part of Mrs. Hammons’ original decorations,” Sondheim said, giving a tour of the living area of the tiny home.
“There’s one package that I always keep out front here, and that was part of the original decorations that Mrs. Hammons had. It’s a diamond-shaped package,” Sondheim said. “There’s mistletoe in the front hall . . . [and a] little parcel leaning against a side table, addressed to the Museum of History & Industry”
But the tiny festive decorations aren’t limited to the living room.
“Normally, there’s a card game going on [in the kitchen], but I take the card game off the table and put the wrapping in there,” Sondheim said, pointing to tiny scissors and colorful wrapping paper.
With 40 years of experience, Robert Sondheim knows how to install miniature Christmas decorations. And he also knows the 70-odd years of history of the tiny house.
“The house was built in 1948. [Mrs. Hammons] had a love of miniatures. She and her husband, [Seattle Times executive] Frederick Dent Hammons didn’t have any children, so this was her contribution to children, and originally she displayed the house to raise money for the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital,” Sondheim said.
Sondheim says Mrs. Hammons donated the house to MOHAI in 1955
It’s clear that miniature house has a “big” history, and it turns out that Mrs. Hammons does, too.
“Mrs. Hammons is from a pioneer family. Her mother was Alice Mercer and her father was [Seattle historian and author] Clarence Bagley,” Sondheim said. “And they had their house on Second and Aloha on Queen Anne Hill . . . [and] the house had a tower her father designed . . . so he could overlook the city and get inspiration for his historical books.”
MOHAI staff are glad to have the Hammons House back, if only for the holiday season.
“Since we moved to the new location, this is one of the most requested artifacts that people want to see and they miss it,” said MOHAI collections manager Betsy Bruemmer. “So we’re really excited to bring it back.”
Also back with the Hammons House are two full-size oil paintings of Daniel Bagley and Thomas Mercer, Claire Hammons’ pioneer grandfathers.
Bagley co-founded the University of Washington in 1861. In 1854, Thomas Mercer first suggested connecting freshwater Lake Washington to saltwater Puget Sound via Lake Union. Mercer is also credited with naming Lake Washington and Lake Union, though both bodies of water, of course, had been known by native names for millennia.
If you look carefully, you’ll find miniature paintings of Bagley and Mercer – actual hand-painted miniature replicas of the full-size paintings – on display inside the Hammons House.
Those looking carefully will also be rewarded with a glimpse of one of the Hammons House’s most bizarre features: a teeny little mouse-skin rug that’s visible near the kitchen.
“Mrs. Hammons’ grandfather was Thomas Mercer, and he said every proper lady should know how to tan a hide,” Robert Sondheim said. “So they caught the mouse, and he taught her how to skin it and tan it, and so that’s the mouse rug.”
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