Donovan homes. If you’ve spent time in Everett you’ve probably seen them.

They line Lombard and Oakes Avenue near Providence Hospital and they pop up around town -- if you keep your eyes peeled you’ll see them randomly in Riverside, Delta, or Lowell neighborhoods. They also line Donovan Lane in Everett, and a few Donovan houses are sprinkled intermittently around Monroe, Washington, just down Highway 2.

The Donovan House is a compact, cottage-style home with a gabled roof, a tiny porch, a tiled fireplace made out of a single piece of concrete, and coved ceilings. They come in two basic styles, “Tudor” or “cottage” though, like modern tract housing, they have roughly the same floor plans. Some other design features include original wood windows with leaded upper sashes, and cold closets with external ice hatches. Donovan homes were perfectly sized single-family homes for mill workers as a growing Everett continued to expand northward from Hewitt in the 1920s and 1930s.

The houses get their name from their architect and builder, Edward Donovan. Donovan came to the Pacific Northwest and initially settled in Marysville in 1900. Donovan was a skilled carpenter and an entrepreneur. He settled his family in Monroe, moving into a house he built. Edward supported his family by building a series of his trademark-style homes, moving into the new houses, and selling the already-built houses.

Though the homes typically sold for a slim profit at about $5000 this proved to be a good business model for the Donovan family. Soon they were able to afford a large and stately two-story craftsman-style home on Harrison Street in Riverside. There the Donovan family established a Riverside farm with chickens and a cow that they pastured in the field where Garfield Park is now.

Edward Donovan, true to his entrepreneurial spirit, tried his hand at other ventures over the years. During World War I, he went into business ferrying cattle from Whidbey Island to Lowell. Then, in the 1920s he returned to his real estate business, building the majority of the homes in the 13th and 14th Street area, near the hospital.

The Great Depression in the 1930s ended the run of Donovan homes. The market couldn’t sustain new investments in housing. Edward Donovan worked on a campaign for Everett mayoral candidate Charles Erickson and worked for a time as a city street supervisor before passing away in his sixties.

The Historic Donovan District (comprising 80 of the original homes) was added to the Everett Register of Historic Places in 1998. In 2006, approximately a quarter of the homes in the district were destroyed despite public protest. 22 Donovan homes were demolished at the time to make room for a 500 million dollar hospital expansion. Some of the homes were moved to the Delta Neighborhood, to the newly-created Donovan lane, where they sit today.

What makes Donovan homes special today, I think, is what made so many homes in North Everett special at the time of their construction: the old-growth wood, the craftsman details, the handmade quality of the affordable, economic, single-family home.

Good things are made to last a long time. Donovan homes are good things and certainly an important part of Everett's history worth celebrating.

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