This Pierce County landmark hosted parties for 100 years. $1.5 million gave it new life
Just around the curve of a quiet, forested road winding through the Gig Harbor area is a quaint sage-green building.
It’s close to 100 years old.
Over its long residence at 8205 86th Ave. NW in Gig Harbor, Rosedale Hall has seen birthdays, weddings and retirements. It’s hosted piano recitals and exercise classes.
The hall recently celebrated a public reopening after PenMet Parks oversaw extensive renovations to the exterior and interior of the building, completed in July. These included repairing the exterior walls and roof trusses, adding a catering kitchen and more storage space, and adding accessibility improvements. There’s also fresh paint, tiling, flooring, cabinets and other updates, according to the park district website.
A PenMet Facebook post about the renovation in March said that the renovations would restore the building’s structural integrity.
To rent the space for an event, residents pay $150 per hour, and non-residents pay $180 per hour. For nonprofits, the rate is $112.50 per hour. All rentals also require a refundable deposit of 50% of the total rental cost. Other rates and the rental form are available on the PenMet Parks website. People can also contact Aiden Krug at (253) 313-5090 or AKrug@penmetparks.org with questions or to schedule a rental.
“I remember when my family moved here, I was about 11 years old and I remember driving by Rosedale Hall sitting in the back of mom’s minivan,” PenMet Parks Executive Director Ally Bujacich said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 17. “And there was just something about this place that draws people in.”
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Joel Wingard attended a faculty Christmas party at Rosedale Hall between 1979 and 1981, he and his wife told The News Tribune at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“We just remember the music and the dancing,” Lucinda Wingard, his wife, said.
For some, the hall has seen them pass several life milestones. In the early 1950s, Bev Jackson came to Rosedale Hall after school with other kids to participate in a church youth group.
“We had games, and some ladies from the church cooked dinner for us for 25 cents, and then we’d have a little meeting afterwards, and hear a little bit of the gospel,” Jackson said. “And I just remember that so fondly.”
She went on to celebrate her wedding shower, baby shower and retirement party at the hall. Now, she and her family are looking to host her 90th birthday party there.
According to PenMet Parks, the original building was built in 1918 at a different location. The building was then disassembled and moved to its current address at 8205 86th Ave. NW in 1925.
A different account appears in a book about the area published around 1991 by Bob Crandall. It says the first building, called South Rosedale Hall, was torn down around 1932. Volunteers from the community used the lumber to build the new structure at the current spot. Harbor History Museum Executive Director Stephanie Lile and longtime resident Jim Langhelm shared scans of pages from the book with The News Tribune.
The building is not listed on county, state or national lists of historic places to be preserved, according to Lile. When asked if the building was ever in danger of being demolished, Lile told The News Tribune via email that she’s sure there was a moment that such a risk existed, but it’s likely that it was cheaper and more feasible to simply restore the current structure. This was the case for the Masonic Lodge at Crescent Creek Park, which was projected to cost $1 million more to demolish and rebuild in the same footprint than to restore it, she wrote.
PenMet Parks Marketing Coordinator Heather Dyson confirmed in an email to The News Tribune that cost analyses showed it was cheaper to renovate Rosedale Hall than replace it. Either way, the community voted strongly in public outreach events to preserve the building’s character, Dyson said.
“The replacement cost was over twice the cost of renovation as more of the site would be required to adhere to new site building codes,” she wrote. “The existing building needed to be brought up to code as it was deficient in these areas; egress, location and age of furnace, accessibility, restrooms, kitchen, gas water heater, and more.”
In total, renovations cost $1,510,000, according to Dyson. PenMet Parks allocated funds for the renovation in their $33.1 million capital budget for 2022.
Langhelm and his wife had their wedding reception at Rosedale Hall 57 years ago. He was also the one who painted the building eight years before that with paint provided by the Rosedale Hall Association, he told The News Tribune at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The building’s color has stayed about the same since then, according to Langhelm.
“Always green,” he said. “It never changed color. Maybe a little different shade, but always green.”
Editor’s note: An initial version of the caption of the aerial photo of the Rosedale area that accompanies this story mischaracterized how long Jim Langhelm has lived in the Gig Harbor area. Langhelm was born in Gig Harbor in 1940.
This story was originally published September 30, 2024 at 11:31 AM.
