Sunset Shopping Center

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Few shoppers trying to negotiate the parking lots and traffic bottlenecks of the Factoria Mall of today—officially Marketplace@Factoria--remember the modest and very useful little shopping center that preceded it in the same spot.  In 1949 Swedish immigrant Ole Chellson and his son Henry began construction of their Sunset Super Market in what is today’s mall’s extreme northwest corner.  Ole had driven an ice truck for the Leschi Ice Company; now he turned entrepreneur. The Factoria area had been initially logged in the 1890s and platted in 1911 with hopes it would become a major manufacturing center.  That dream died early, although in 1927 the old stove factory (the only actual factory that opened at Factoria) was purchased with the expectation that it would become marketing headquarters of a developing rabbit industry on the Eastside.  The plant was being equipped to handle fresh and canned rabbit meat and to cure and market the fur.

 The Chellsons were in the right spot at the right time, with a clear eye to the future. Ole Chellson had bought his parcel in 1940, just as the Sunset Highway—today’s I-90—east to Issaquah was being straightened and widened to four lanes to be ready for the July 2nd opening of the new Lacey Murrow Floating Bridge across Lake Washington. In 1949 Norwood Village, a community of over 100 homes largely for families of World War II veterans, was being developed across the highway, and on hills to the East, in Horizon View and Hilltop, homes were being built.  Eastgate and Lake Hills would arrive within a few more years. A Seattle Times reporter noted that “the Chellsons expect the district will develop even faster when the tolls come off the Lake Washington Floating Bridge.” 

Photo (above): Three stores occupying Sunset Shopping Center Shown, Factoria Supermarket, Olive's Sundries, and George Bondo - Realty Priced Right

By December 1950 the Sunset Super Market was open for business, and the following year a second building went up next door, occupied by Olive’s Sundries (Olive was Henry’s older sister) and by George Bondo Real Estate.  At some point one of the walls of the grocery held a huge mural, perhaps created by “Mother Chellson,”  illustrating life on Lake Washington.   On the market’s first anniversary, Ole and Henry advertised in the Mercer Islander a free television set and groceries “to select customers.” Also in 1950 the Sunset Drive-In Theater opened, the venue for the shopping center’s “annual” Easter egg hunt in 1951 for kids under 12 years old.

In 1952 Henry was recalled to the Marines and went off to the Korean War.  The grocery was leased out, and to keep himself busy Ole built a gas station in the little complex and operated it for Richfield Oil.  Over the years more small businesses were added: a barber shop, Bob Jones Surveyor, and Petersen’s Upholstery Shop.  The market got Russ Baker’s Russell’s Meats, and Olive’s Sundries became Maxine’s Café (“a Good Place to Eat” according to local ads) and later Dotty’s Lunch. There was even an electrical service and plant nursery, owned by Nap Nolet. The drive-in theater was a favorite draw.  An Issaquah resident who grew up in Hilltop Community recalls that the local teenagers who didn’t want to spend the money for an entry ticket would drive to the hill across the Sunset Highway, near the Unitarian church, and watch the movie from there, even though they couldn’t hear it.

Photo (above): Image of shelves in the Factoria Supermarket stuffed with food. The mural designed by Mrs. Chellson can be seen on the back wall.

But the Eastside’s population was exploding, and the local subdivisions offered their own larger supermarkets and related small businesses.  In 1977 the Factoria Square Mall opened right next to and to the South of  the drive-in and the little Sunset Shopping Center.  Among the three largest stores were a Safeway, an Ernst Home Center and a Pay-n-Save drugstore.   Several other buildings held smaller shops.  In 1980 a three-theater complex opened at Factoria on the site of the old drive-in. The handwriting was on the wall.

In 1999 Henry Chellson donated to the Eastside Heritage Center a trove of family  photos and memorabilia.  Unfortunately, the outset of coronavirus has closed access to that collection, and with local libraries and archives still closed, it’s not currently possible to trace the final stages of life of the Sunset Shopping Center.  It still lives on in the memories of those current residents who grew up in the Eastside of the 1950s and 60s and for whose families the modest grocery was a godsend, a spot to pick up a quart of milk, loaf of bread, or some fresh meat on the way home from work in Seattle or shopping at Bellevue Square.

Photo (above): In this aerial photograph you can see the back of the drive-screen with the little shopping center buildings laying between the theater and highway 405.

Archaeology Around Japanese American Communities at Barnestown

Edited by David R. Carlson

Around 1898 to 1924 a small town existed in southeastern King County known as Barnestown. This town was created for sawmill and lumber workers recruited to work in the area. Building towns like this allowed workers and their families to live in a community and enjoy some comforts in between hard labor. The needs of workers and their relations is why a store, bathhouse, and school were all built. The buildings have since been taken down by the Kent Lumber Company and the lumber sold, but remnants of Barnestown’s occupants, can still be found today. The material objects left behind are clues about how Japanese Americans there spent their days and the kind of changes and pressures they faced living in a new land.

 Recently, University of Washington PhD student David R. Carlson has conducted archaeological research into the site focusing on Issei (first generation) and Nissei (second generation) Japanese Americans who lived and worked at Barnestown. By first conducting a surface survey and then excavation, Carlson and his team explored what material culture was left behind to tell about the Japanese American laborers lives and some of their experiences around adapting the life in the USA, labor relations, and racial discrimination. From documented histories about our region we know that adjusting to life in the USA was not easy for many immigrant groups, mainly because of the discrimination they often faced. For Japanese American laborers bigotry took the form of pay inequality, legal exclusion from settlement, and even outright violence. By looking at written records and the layout of the town of Barnestown, Carlson was able to create a workplan that could potentially shed light on the day to day experiences of Japanese Americans in sawmill towns like this. Carlson hopes to discover this and more about how the pressures of discrimination affected their daily lives.

Although issues such as adjusting to cultural changes and racial discrimination are not always directly evidenced in excavated material or blatantly obvious in styles of living, research into history creates an understanding of the context which typically guides archaeological research. For example, one of Carlson’s research questions is to figure out the patterns and activities related to alcohol consumption in the community. This requires him to understand what kinds of alcohol were consumed and where, and to contrast the different kinds of alcohol consumed in public versus private areas. These patterns might not seem significant, but with an understanding of existing pressures at the time, these patterns can be given more meaning. Well-documented bigotry was prevalent among many more established immigrants of European descent towards newer Japanese American immigrants. Because of this, influential members of the Japanese American community often discouraged drinking in order to help avoid dangerous situations for their fellow community members. This kind of information, can help archaeologists like Carlson imagine how certain patterns of alcohol consumption—such as a community avoiding high-proof, hard alcohol consumption—can point to larger ideas of socially acceptable alcohol consumption and racial discrimination.

This is just one example of how a more holistic view of history and material evidence can lead to important connections. The above example indicates why this is so important to put material evidence into a larger context. Archeologists rely on the physical materials and chemical evidence discovered during excavation to give clues about the reality of people’s lives in the past. Trained archaeologists have the skills not only to apply a historical context from researching paper records, they also learn to document findings during excavations in a way that tells much more than any one object could. Without this kind of information even the most interesting artifact can become useless in learning about the past. Unfortunately for this particular project, much of the analysis of physical objects had been delayed by the global Covid-19 outbreak, but David R. Carlson shared his preliminary work with us this July, and we look forward to hearing more when he is able to continue his work.

 Special thanks to University of Washington PhD. candidate David R. Carlson (pictured left) for sharing his work with us and providing the information for this article.

David R. Carlson’s research was funded by a UW Department of Anthropology Pilot Study grant and a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (ID # 1743498). It was conducted with the permission and support of Seattle Public Utilities and the Cedar River Watershed Management District. This project further relies on assistance and/or material from the Cedar River Watershed Education Center, the DENSHO Encyclopedia, the Northwest Nikkei Museum, the Hoover Institution Archives, the Seattle Municipal Archives, and the University of Washington Special Collections Library, as well as a large number of incredible and dedicated volunteers! Special thanks to these organizations and Mr. Carlson for bringing this research to the Eastside Heritage Center.