This 160-year-old Pierce County home is set to be demolished and turned into a park
Time is running out for a piece of Sumner’s history.
The City of Sumner has officially applied for a demolition permit, the demolition sign is up, and the city can take one step forward in its plan to demolish the Ryan House at 1228 Main St. Carmen Palmer, spokesperson for the City of Sumner, told The News Tribune that demolition is expected in late spring or early summer.
“We’re currently doing a lot of the documenting and recording that comes with historic structures we can’t save,” Palmer said.
Palmer said in an email to The News Tribune that the city is “still processing the permit” and the demolition permit hasn’t been issued yet.
This comes two months after the city finalized changes to its comprehensive plan in January. A Pierce County Superior Court judge previously told the city that the house couldn’t come down until they changed language in their comprehensive plan that called for renovating the house.
The city says the 160-year-old house is unsafe due to a lot of structural damage. According to the city’s website, the cabin’s attic floor collapsed into the cabin below, the roof of the kitchen is sinking into the room and the kitchen wing is not attached to the main house. City officials discovered the damage while trying to renovate the house, The News Tribune reported in 2023.
The Sumner City Council voted to demolish the house on Sept. 18, 2023 after deciding that fixing the structural damage would cost more than they were willing to pay. However, a group of residents who oppose the demolition are trying to raise the $2.2 million the city has said it would need in order to consider renovating the house instead.
‘It belongs to all of us’
The Ryan House was home to the city’s first mayor, George Ryan, and his wife, postmistress Lucy Ryan. The couple’s children donated the house to the city in 1926 and it has since been used as both a library and a museum.
Now, almost a century later, Nancy Ryan Dressel — a fourth-generation Ryan — hopes to keep her family’s history standing.
“I was at a class reunion meeting and I heard from a friend: ‘Hey, they want to tear down the Ryan House,’” Ryan Dressel said. “[I was] mystified, shocked and really, really mad.”
Ryan Dressel said the house has played a key part in allowing her family’s history to pass down from generation to generation.
“My mother was a fabulous genealogist. She would go around all the schools for years and give talks on the history of Sumner and, of course, Ryan House was involved with that,” Ryan Dressel said. “I know it belongs to the city, it belongs to the community, it belongs to all of us. We’re proud of the home and what it represents.”
Ryan Dressel also said she was disappointed in the city’s decision to demolish the house, saying the city “decided that it’s not worth saving” after failing to maintain it. Palmer wrote in an email to The News Tribune that the city has performed maintenance on the house regularly since 1926, and that its current problems stem from the building’s structure.
“Portions of the house are experiencing significant structural failure with missing beams, split studs and absence of support systems,” Palmer wrote. “That’s not a non-maintenance issue. That’s an issue that extends from it being built in a way that was common in the 1800s but would never pass modern codes for safety today.”
‘We’re trying to put forth as much funds as possible.’
Nick Biermann, a member of the group Save the Ryan House, told The News Tribune that even though the city has applied for a demolition permit, the group is continuing to raise funds in hopes of saving the historic structure.
“We’re trying to put forth as much funds as possible for renovation so that we could restore the house and reopen it as a cultural heritage site of some kind,” Biermann said. “Whether that would become a museum, a community center — it would not only honor and remember the history, but also have a purpose to the facility itself.”
Biermann said the group has a PayPal and GoFundMe for direct donations and has also hosted fundraising events. He said the group’s goal is to establish a public-private partnership with the city to reduce costs.
Save the Ryan House has over $22,000 in donations and sales, Biermann said, as well as $700,000 in pledges — $500,000 of that coming from an anonymous Ryan family descendant.
“[The $500,000 pledge] would put us on a path towards a million dollars,” Biermann said. “So, that’s our first goal, and then we’re hoping that would be enough to open a conversation about funding a significant part of this project with private money.”
Palmer said it is too late.
“We have met several times with Save the Ryan House and once with the Sumner Historical Society,” Palmer wrote in an email to The News Tribune. “We all met back in December because that’s when we really needed to know if the $2 million in private funds was there, and that was now four months ago.”
Palmer said the city can’t leave the house standing while residents try to raise millions of dollars to save it. She mentioned that if a private owner owned a house that was this much of a safety hazard, the city would not let them leave it up indefinitely — and the city has to hold itself to the same standard.
The Lucy Ryan Park?
Palmer told The News Tribune that, when the family left the house to the city in 1926, they told the city to use the land as a park honoring their mother. She said the Ryans were expecting the house to be torn down five years later, but since the city wanted to use it as a library, the demolition never happened.
Because of this, the deed prevents the city from rebuilding the house. Instead, the city will use the site as a public park once the house comes down.
Ryan heirs will be able to salvage anything they want beforehand, Palmer said.
“I want the house to stay intact for everyone to enjoy it — not just to split it up like legos and distribute it all over,” Ryan Dressel said. “It needs to be intact.”
Palmer noted that the city and Save the Ryan House are working together on a report that will document the building before it’s lost. She said Save the Ryan House has agreed to fund half of that report for $5,800.
Biermann told the News Tribune that the agreement is still being negotiated, and that the report could be used to document the house before demolition or “serve as a basis for future renovation and restoration work.”
“There is a potential for mutual benefit here, which is the intent of this proposed collaborative effort,” Biermann wrote in an email to The News Tribune. “Save Ryan House does not intend to sign an agreement that concedes demolition as the only approach moving forward.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article said the City of Sumner has officially obtained a demolition permit. The city has applied for a permit, but the permit is still being processed and has not been issued yet.
This story was originally published March 22, 2025 at 5:15 AM.
