Bigelow House Museum in Olympia to celebrate 20th anniversary

When you step inside the Bigelow House Museum in Olympia, it’s easy to get lost in another century.

The steep-roofed 1850s Carpenter Gothic house, which was home to territorial legislator Daniel Bigelow and his schoolteacher wife Ann Elizabeth White Bigelow, is furnished with items that belonged to the couple and their descendants, such as antique quilts, furniture, art and musical instruments.

There’s even a collection of well-used law books that Daniel Bigelow brought on the Oregon Trail in 1851.

A celebration is planned for Sunday to mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Bigelow House Museum. The free public event will feature living history tours, musicians and a formal program to honor the Bigelow Family as well as donors and supporters.

“I think it’s an Olympia treasure,” said longtime South Sound historian Shanna Stevenson, vice president of the Olympia Historical Society and Bigelow House Museum.

The 3,100-square-foot pioneer house is listed on national, state and local historic registers. It was restored by the nonprofit Bigelow House Preservation Association in 1995. It features original period furnishings, and documents and photos from five generations of the Bigelow family.

These days, the house is open for public tours (usually on Sundays, although the schedule varies) and special events, and is maintained by the Olympia Historical Society and Bigelow House Museum. The volunteer group recently finished restoration of an upstairs bedroom.

“I think it turned out beautifully,” said museum board member and retired state Chief Justice Gerry Alexander. “There are some other rooms upstairs that we want to do now.”

Historic homes are often decorated to reflect certain eras, but it’s unusual to have direct access to a family’s collection of artifacts, according to Heather Lockman, who was president of the preservation association when it restored the home.

There’s a copy of Bigelow’s 160-acre land claim, along with several historic photographs. Much of the house’s history was told through Daniel Bigelow’s journals and other writings.

Women’s suffragist Susan B. Anthony also wrote in her diary about a visit at the Bigelows’ home, Stevenson said.

The Bigelow house stands high on a bluff above Budd Inlet. A series of historic photos in the museum depict how the city of Olympia grew around the house.

“It really anchors, in many ways, the history of Olympia,” Lockman said.

It was the childhood home of John Bigelow, 76, of Boise, Idaho, who is Daniel Bigelow’s great-grandson. He and his brother David will be at Sunday’s anniversary event.

John Bigelow said some of his fondest memories of the house include science experiments in the garage and one of the upstairs bedrooms.

“I nearly burned the house down once,” he said. “Well, I was playing with gunpowder upstairs. ...”

“The house is still there — no thanks to me.”

The historic renovation included removal of dropped ceilings, demolition of walls that had been added during various remodels, and restoration of Victorian-style wallpaper with designs that are close to the original ones, which were discovered under five layers of other wallpaper. That restoration work has dramatically changed it from the house John Bigelow grew up in.

But there’s still a strong sense of familiarity, he said. One of his favorite places in the house has always been the kitchen.

“Ma always had a jar of something she cooked up, like cookies,” he said.

When he was growing up, Glass Avenue was a gravel road, blackberry bushes and grape vines stood where neighboring houses were built, and he was awakened to a whistle every morning from a plywood factory in the area, John Bigelow said.

He said it’s fun to return home and see the family’s heirlooms, such as an early 1870s Steinway grand piano that was shipped to Olympia around Cape Horn, and a shotgun that he found that’s believed to have belonged to his great-grandfather and is now displayed above a fireplace mantel.

“The house is a structure, and the real history is the stories of the people in it,” John Bigelow said.

This story was originally published September 16, 2015 at 5:30 PM with the headline "Bigelow House Museum in Olympia to celebrate 20th anniversary."