There are home renovation projects, then there’s Rust Mansion. Learn new owner’s plans
The Rust Mansion might be Tacoma’s grandest home.
For the last several decades, the 1905 home built by one of the city’s wealthiest industrial magnates has become something of an eyesore, its once lavish exterior decaying and flaking into history.
Now, the paint is coming off intentionally. The nearly 11,000-square-foot mansion at 1001 N. I St. is crawling with painters, carpenters and other crafts people.
Its new owner, real estate developer Ashley Burks, is determined to return the building to its glory days when William Ross Rust, for whom the town of Ruston is named, lived there with his wife, Helen, and their family in the early 1900s.
“When we’re done here, it’s going to look just like [when] Rust built it,” she said.
Burks bought the house in December. She took possession in February, and work began almost instantly. She has crews working seven days a week.
Burks has built homes, strip malls, car washes and coffee stands.
But, she’s never restored a 117-year-old historical mansion.
“Every little detail speaks volumes,” she said. “Every room has something ornate that you have to cater to.”
ASHLEY BURKS
Burks paid $2.5 million for the property. She’s only the fifth owner in the century-plus history of the home.
When she is finished, the house will go back on the market. To call this a house flip — where a real estate investor buys, rehabs and sells a property — might be technically accurate. But Burks’ self-assigned mission is so much more.
She’s not taking the easy route on any of it, she said. Her goal: historical accuracy.
The house is on the Tacoma city and National Register of Historic Places, which makes any design changes to its facade difficult if not impossible.
“Every column, every niche, every notch has to be exactly how it was,” Burks said. Molds are being created to recast missing design elements.
She has more leeway inside but is sticking to her plan to make it look like the Rusts just stepped away for a walk.
During Tacoma’s lean years, the mansion was turned into an apartment building. Some of its architectural features were boarded over and walls were haphazardly added. Many other grand mansions in the area suffered the same fate as owners converted them to apartment buildings to save them from the wrecking ball.
Usually, that meant a horrific loss of fixtures, finishes and overall character. Somehow, the Rust mansion survived mostly intact.
The previous owners embarked on a years-long restoration but only got partway there. Now, Burks is finishing the job.
RUST HISTORY
Rust arrived in Tacoma in 1889. He quickly turned a small copper smelter just southeast of Point Defiance into a gigantic industrial operation.
“You have to appreciate what a big deal copper was in that period before the First World War,” Tacoma historian Michael Sullivan said in 2015.
Gas lighting was giving way to electrical lighting. Electrical devices proliferated. They all depended on copper.
“There was so much pressure from J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheims,” Sullivan said. “They came in and made him just a ridiculous offer to buy the smelter.”
The smelter would eventually become an environmental disaster — a Superfund site with a legacy that can still be seen today in residential soil replacement programs. The smelter site itself is now the Point Ruston development.
When Rust sold the smelter in 1905, he got $5.5 million, equivalent to more than $150 million in 2022 dollars.
Rust chose to stay in Tacoma. Along with the downtown Rust Building and Winthrop Hotel, he invested in ventures such as the H.C. Weaver movie studio and the consortium that bought land to lure the Army to the future Fort Lewis.
He also built himself a palace.
WHITE HOUSE OF THE WEST
The Rusts commissioned architect Ambrose Russell to design the home.
Russell was born in India in 1857 to Scottish missionary parents and studied architecture at the University of Glasgow and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
He designed the 1908 Governor’s Mansion in Olympia as well as Tacoma’s Immanuel Presbyterian Church, the Tacoma Armory, the Perkins Building and the Masonic Temple (now the Landmark Convention Center.)
He also designed several other grand Tacoma homes, including one of the city’s best examples of Prairie style, the 1909 Dickson House.
Rust wanted his home to be “the White House of the West,” using the same neoclassical architectural style as the presidential mansion in Washington, D.C.
The Rusts spared no expense on the home. It cost $122,500 to build in 1905, when the average residential home was $6,000.
The Tacoma mansion is clad in sandstone and dominated by a Roman Doric portico. A large veranda adds to the stately look.
The columns and wood trim and adornments need the most work. Several have been removed for restoration.
RETURN TO YESTERYEAR
Burks has run her real estate company by herself following the death of her husband, Bryan Meade, in 2017.
Meade loathed historical homes and disdained ever buying one, Burks said. But, whenever they drove by the Rust Mansion, he said it was the one exception he would make.
“We wanted this together,” Burks said. “So, I’m kind of just completing what we were going to do.”
Burks knows the house is a Tacoma landmark, and its renovation has sparked intense interest. She’s created a website to follow its progress and has invited news media in for tours but is reluctant to reveal too much until the project is completed.
“It’s been such a mystery for so long,” she said. “But, at this point, I think the public really has an interest and they want to know. I’m happy to share the restoration process.”
She expects to spend over $1 million on the restoration.
A LOOK INSIDE
The home’s 10,800 square feet are spread over four levels in an L-shaped format.
A surprisingly small foyer gives no hint to the grand spaces inside. A visitor can go left to William Rust’s office or right to Helen Rust’s office.
William’s office is dark and masculine, typical of the era. Helen’s is like walking into a flower blossom. A pink domed ceiling holds a sparkling chandelier. The fireplace, one of at least nine in the home, has a mantel of carved wood and a tile mosaic.
From there, a visitor enters the grand living room, large enough to hold several tiny houses. An ornate boxed beam ceiling joins fireplaces at either end. One has ornate metal decorations.
The dining room is wood paneled. A hidden button opens one of the panels to reveal a secret liquor cabinet. It was used to store illegal booze during Prohibition.
A stairwell lined with mahogany columns leads to the second floor. There, several bedrooms, including the master, offer views of the neighborhood and Commencement Bay. The Rusts would have breakfast in a dining room on the second floor, Burks said.
A tile installer was working this week in a second-floor bathrooms. Burks could have knocked out a wall to make it bigger, but, like the rest of the house she wants it to be what Rust created.
“Everything will be exactly as he intended,” she said.
There is a servants’ staircase that goes to the third floor where staff lived in several rooms. During Rust’s time, the home would have had a small army of servants.
The kitchen’s original look and fixtures are long gone. Burks will bring it up to date. It has a large dumbwaiter — or small elevator depending on your size — that still works.
The home’s basement would make a dream man cave, or woman cave. It has a ballroom with an enclosed bandstand. Next to it is a pool room.
A detached garage was outfitted with a turntable, still operational today.
The property has two driveways, one for the owners and one for deliveries, with an alley exit.
RUST MANSION LORE
Like any mansion of its size, age and repute, the Rust Mansion has a long history of hope, tragedy and renewal.
While the Rusts were in Europe in 1911, one of their two sons, Howard, 24, died. A newspaper story from the period said he was on a ranch in Hanford where he “ruptured an artery in the heart while conversing with friends” just shy of his 25th birthday.
Others say he died in the house by his own hand.
However it happened, their son was gone, and Helen Rust couldn’t bear to live in the home that contained so many memories of Howard. The Rusts sold the house for $50,000 and moved out, leaving their furnishings, for which they had paid $50,000, behind.
They downsized, millionaire style, by having a new home built at 521 N. Yakima Ave., commonly known as the second Rust Mansion. It still stands today, long returned to its splendor.
In 1931, during the Great Depression, the then owners of the first Rust Mansion fell on hard times. A Dec. 24 front page story in the Tacoma News Tribune was headlined, “Tacoma family turns home into fort.” A photo shows family members, holding long guns, gathered around a fireplace.
The Kruger family had apparently failed to pay their mortgage and expected their home to be foreclosed. They were determined to stop it.
“The occasion is a fight between its occupants, who have surrounded themselves with a bodyguard, and the Paramount Securities Company, a Seattle loan organization, which has started action over a mortgage,” the newspaper wrote.
Burks plans on finishing her renovation of the first Rust Mansion by summer.
This story was originally published March 28, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
