Meeker Mansion

Italianate Victorian mansion built in 1890 by hop king Ezra Meeker and his wife Eliza Jane, featuring ornate ceiling paintings, stained glass windows, and six original fireplaces.

Eliza Jane Sumner Meeker never intended to live in a log cabin forever. After twenty-six years in a modest two-room dwelling with her husband Ezra and their children, she visited Europe in the mid-1880s and fell in love with Victorian architecture. In 1887, she hired Tacoma architects Farrell and Darmer to design a seventeen-room Italianate mansion on Spring Street in Puyallup, and she insisted on one condition: the property title would be registered in her name alone, an extraordinary arrangement for the era. Construction took three years and cost $26,000. Frederick Nelson Atwood Jr., an East Coast-trained artist who specialized in theater decoration, moved into the mansion for an entire year to paint the elaborate ceiling frescoes and friezes. By the time the Meekers cooked their first meal in the house on December 10, 1890, it featured six fireplaces with hand-carved wooden mantels and imported English and Italian tile surrounds, leaded stained glass windows framed in ash and walnut, twelve-foot ceilings, burnished hardwood floors, and a functioning intercom system of nickel-plated speaking tubes connecting the rooms. A billiard room and a third-floor ballroom completed the picture of frontier opulence.

Ezra Meeker had earned every square foot. Born in Ohio in 1830, he crossed the Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon in 1852 and settled in what would become Puyallup in 1862. He named the city after the local indigenous tribe, served as its first mayor and postmaster, and built a hop-farming empire that made him the self-proclaimed Hop King of the World, with a London export office by 1884. But fortune proved fickle. In 1891, a devastating hop aphid infestation destroyed his crops and wiped out his wealth. Four unsuccessful trips to the Klondike Gold Rush followed. Eliza, sensing creditors circling, quietly sold the mansion to their daughter Caroline and son-in-law Eben Osborne for $10,000 in 1901. Eliza Jane died on October 9, 1909, and Ezra never returned to the house. He spent his final decades retracing the Oregon Trail by ox wagon in his late seventies, meeting President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington in 1907, flying over the trail in an Army airplane in 1924, and dying at age ninety-seven in Seattle on December 3, 1928.

The mansion itself endured decades of institutional use. It served as Puyallup's first hospital from 1910 to 1915, then was purchased for $8,000 by the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic as a home for Civil War widows and orphans. It later became the Valleyhome Convalescent Hospital, and by the time the last nursing home closed in 1969, the original ceiling paintings had been covered with layers of paint, walls had been removed, drop ceilings installed, and asbestos siding bolted over the exterior. An arsonist set fire to the building on September 20, 1970. The Puyallup Historical Society had incorporated that same year, saving the mansion from planned demolition by purchasing it and raising $50,000 for initial restoration. A renewed dwelling was dedicated on July 23, 1972. A second fire around Halloween 1992 caused over $100,000 in additional damage. Restoration continued for decades: thousands of wood screws stabilized the century-old plaster, and the original ceiling paintings were painstakingly uncovered, copied, and repainted. The mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 26, 1971.

Paranormal activity at the mansion has been reported since at least the mid-1990s, and ghost hunters have frequented the property since 1996. Some authorities claim as many as seven distinct spirits wander the premises, though Ezra and Eliza Jane remain the most frequently encountered. Overnight guests report being startled awake by the sound of loud snoring emanating from the master bedroom, and some have seen the full-bodied apparition of Ezra lying in bed beside them. Eliza Jane appears at her bedroom window gazing outward, and has been spotted applying perfume in the restroom, leaving behind an overwhelming fragrance that suddenly pervades the house. Ezra has been seen in the yard making sawing motions, as though still tending to his property. Both ghosts make their presence known during social functions hosted in the mansion, appearing among guests before vanishing.

Investigation teams including the Auburn Paranormal Activities Research Team have conducted excursions at the mansion, with investigators reporting doors shutting on their own and disembodied footsteps following them through the halls. In November 2011, professional psychic medium Lynne Sutherland Olson was assigned the master bedroom during a psychic fair and reported sensing Ezra within ten minutes of arrival, describing him sawing logs on the left side of the bed while Eliza Jane waited patiently on the right for her weariness to overcome his snores. Olson reported that Eliza communicated detailed opinions about the restoration: she objected to milk glass vases on the mantel, insisting they should be crystal oil lamps with clear chimneys, expressed approval of the fireplace's original decorative tile work, showed particular attachment to her walk-in closet and dressing room, and waved goodbye through a stained glass door at day's end. Another documented visitor account describes Eliza Jane revealing details about quiet evenings of companionship in her lamp-lit bedroom and criticizing specific restoration choices as incorrect. The mansion was featured on the Travel Channel's Mysteries at the Castle. Today the Puyallup Historical Society operates the mansion as a museum offering guided and self-guided tours, and the Meekers, by all accounts, remain its most attentive and opinionated residents.