Crews demolish 160-year-old Pierce County home that was a local landmark
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- City crews demolished the 160-year-old Ryan House in Sumner on July 24, 2025.
- Officials cited unsafe structural damage and high renovation costs as reasons.
- Courts dismissed appeals by preservationists attempting to halt demolition.
A slice of Pierce County history is being demolished after years of litigation.
The Ryan House – a 160-year-old home at 1228 Main St. in Sumner – will be demolished from July 24 to July 26, according to a Friday news release from the City of Sumner. After demolition, the city will turn the land into a park.
“Contractors will salvage reusable items from the house that can be safely removed,” the release said. “All salvaged items will be safely stored and made available for the Ryan family to retrieve.”
Carmen Palmer, spokesperson for the city, told The News Tribune in an email that the city got the demolition permit at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday and started salvaging work at 4 p.m. Crews started demolishing the house this morning at 7 a.m.
“The house was down pretty fast, by about 8:30 a.m., and that included them pausing to salvage one more attic window they couldn’t safely get from the inside,” Palmer wrote. “The quickness with which some of it came down confirms how bad the structure was.”
This is the final development in a years-long struggle between the city and the citizen group, Save the Ryan House. The group held a campaign trying to raise the $2.2 million the city said it would need to consider renovation and also sued to try to stop the demolition.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking to see this happen – this 150-year-old piece of our history is being treated like a pile of garbage and chopped up and taken away like it has no value,” Nick Biermann, spokesperson for Save the Ryan House, told The News Tribune on Friday.
Biermann told The News Tribune in March that the group was hosting fundraising events in hopes of saving the structure. In March, the group said it had raised over $22,000 in donations and sales, as well as $700,000 in pledges – $500,000 of that coming from an anonymous Ryan family descendant.
Why is the house being demolished?
The city is demolishing the house because of its extensive structural damage. According to the city’s website, the attic floor of the cabin attached to the main house collapsed into the cabin below, the roof of the kitchen is sinking into the room and the kitchen wing is no longer 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.
“We had a great dream for renovating this house, but we couldn’t pursue that dream at the expense of everything else,” council member Barbara Bitetto said in the July 25 news release. “We had the unenviable task of deciding when enough was enough and having to tell staff to stop. I think we did the right thing, hard as it was, to protect people’s safety and to wisely use people’s limited tax dollars.”
What went into the fight to save it?
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 after that, the city used it as both a library and a museum.
Heir Nancy Ryan Dressel, who is a member of Save the Ryan House, told The News Tribune in March that she would do whatever she could to keep her family’s history standing.
“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.”
In January, the city finalized changes to its comprehensive plan after a lawsuit from Ryan Dressel and the Save Our Sumner Committee. A Pierce County Superior Court judge told the city in March 2024 that the house couldn’t come down until they changed language in their comprehensive plan that called for renovating the house.
According to the city’s July 25 news release, Save the Ryan House recently challenged the environmental approval for the demolition to proceed under state law.
“Both the Superior Court judge and the hearing examiner dismissed the appeals,” the release said.
Why did the city choose demolition?
Ryan Dressel told The News Tribune in March that 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.”
Palmer said the city couldn’t leave the house standing while residents tried 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 she said the city had to hold itself to the same standard.
“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 in March. “We all met back in December because that’s when we really needed to know if the $2 million in private funds was there.”
Palmer said the city considered partnering with a nonprofit to fix the building, or giving the building back to the family – but that neither of those options followed city code, which requires the property owner to immediately fix a building that has been red-tagged.
“The city did suggest returning it to the heirs. Neither option removes the requirement to remediate a red-tagged building,” Palmer wrote in the July 25 news release. “If the city had turned over the structure, the nonprofit or family would have been required to fix the structure or face fines up to $500 per day.”
The future of the land
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, she said. Instead, the city will use the site as a public park once the house comes down.
“The city will make the space usable and enjoyable by the public after the house has been removed,” Palmer wrote in the July 25 news release. “The council budgeted some funding for park development and amenities in the 2025-2026 budget, but most of those funds are going now to litigation.”
The News Tribune asked Palmer how much the city spent on litigation to demolish the house and how much the park will cost, and she said the city does not have those answers yet.
“The park fees can vary based on how developed or not it ends up being. That’s a conversation that needs to happen with the council and the community,” Palmer wrote in an email. “As for legal fees, those are driven from having to defend the city in motions filed against us, so we’re not really in control of that total amount.”
Biermann said Save the Ryan House wanted a temporary restraining order against the city to allow the Ryan family to “salvage items that [were] still in the house that the city did not deem of value.”
The judge denied their request, he said.
“The problem is that the city is making the decision about what is salvageable instead of asking the Ryan family for what they would like to be salvaged from the house, [including] sawmill wood, untreated, 150-year-old wood that’s in that structure,” Biermann told The News Tribune. “The city is acting on behalf of the family.”
Biermann said the deed from 1926 required the city to consult with the family when demolition happened. The group will now redirect its energy into fighting for the family to regain control of the property from the city, he said.
“We are going to continue our fight as much as possible, we’re not giving up,” Biermann said. “[Because] the city failed to keep the house open and because the city did not involve the Ryan House in that salvage, we have a court case pending in Pierce County Superior Court that alleges that the property should be returned to the family.”
Palmer said the city has done its best to work with the family on salvaging items, and will continue to do so.
“We will continue to work with the family to get them the salvaged items. For example, there was some writing on a plaster wall in a closet. There’s no way to remove plaster like that in one piece, so a family member asked if we’d take a good, high-resolution photo of it, which we did and sent to her. That was back in 2023 when we filed for the first demolition permit,” Palmer wrote in an email to The News Tribune. “Since then, the building’s structure continued to deteriorate, and there was no safe way to allow the family to walk through the house. The safety of all involved, including the family, remains our top priority. We will schedule a time later this year to allow the heirs to walk through the salvaged items and take what they’d like.”
News Tribune archives contributed to this report.
This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 10:48 AM.
