Alexander’s Work

 

 

Alexander Munro worked on jobs all over the Pacific Northwest, from British Columbia to Olympia. He was a member of the Stone Cutters’ Association of North America, a very strong union that required their members to be paid in gold, while miners and other trades were often paid in company script. Alexander was one of the steady, family men who worked on the biggest jobs.

In Victoria, he worked on the Parliament Buildings, the Empress Hotel (built 1904-1908) and some of the area’s most prominent homes. He also worked on New Dunsmuir Castle at Hatley Park (completed 1908) and the government buildings in New Westminster, British Columbia.

In Washington he worked on the Bailey Building in Seattle, Dry-dock Number 2 at the Bremerton Ship Yard, the first large Seattle Public Library, the homes for the mentally ill in Steilacoom (Western State Hospital), Old Main and Canada House (originally the Henry Schupp Home) at Western Washington University, and Denny Hall, Parrington Hall and Meany Hall at the University of Washington. And in Alaska, he worked on the Indian Mission at Haines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1916 he helped build the fireplaces at Paradise Lodge and the small dry-laid structures at Camp Muir on Mount Rainier. Alexander and the other stone cutters hiked up to Camp Muir, while tools and supplies came up on pack mules.

 

 

He also worked on Thornwood Castle at American Lake.  Thornwood was built by Chester Thorne, a wealthy Tacoma financier and Mount Rainier enthusiast. 

 

 

At about the time Thornwood was constructed, Edward S. Ingraham owned a summer lodge near Ilahee, across the Bay from the Munros. Ingraham was the superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools and a prominent member of the Rainier Club and the Mountaineers. He climbed Rainier with John Muir in 1888 and Ingraham Glacier is named for him. In those early days, there was no boat service to Ilahee, and it’s likely that Ingraham stopped at Gibson’s Landing and that the Munro boys ferried guests and groceries over to his lodge.

 

 

 

Alexander also helped construct the Carnegie funded Seattle Public Library in 1906. The sandstone structure was damaged in the 1949 earthquake, and the wrecker’s ball finished it off in 1959.

 

His crowning achievements were the pillars on the Second and Marion Building in Seattle (in front of what is now the Metropolitan Grill) and the stonework on the Washington State Capitol in Olympia.

 

    

 

At the family home at Crystal Springs, he built the beach-rock foundation on the “original” portion of the home, stone retaining walls, cut granite steps leading to the house, carved sandstone fireplace in the living room, gorgeous beach-rock chimney, two beach-rock well house structures and marble kitchen countertops. 

 

 

 

At times he worked in connection with the Walker Cut Stone Company out of Tacoma.

 

 

 

In 1922, construction began on the new State Capitol at Olympia. Alexander was about sixty years old when he worked on this project as a lead stonecutter. Several of the family visited the job and remembered that he sat at a worktable with plans and blueprints spread out before him, and that other stonecutters came to him with questions and asking for instructions. At one point, as the lantern and finial were going into place on the top of the dome, his son George visited the job and took photos. Below are ten photographs with captions in his own words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bainbridge Island

March 15, 1967

Dear Ralph,

…The carvers were all highly skilled mechanics having learned their trade in four to seven years of apprenticeship working in the shops and attending night school where they had to study geometry, drawing, art and architecture, which they applied on the job under the guidance of a master carver who taught them how to use the tools.

There must have been as many as thirty carvers plus helpers and apprentices on the capitol job the last two years in Olympia. Some of them had been there for the full job and some of the older fellows had worked on the old capitol too which is downtown.

Most of the master carvers were men who had learned their trades in European countries.

All these carvers were fine family men, “not boomers,” who stayed in rooming houses when away from home. They all belonged to the Stonecutters and Carvers Unions with locals in all the large cities. When a big job came up, the contractors would get idle men from any of the locals; San Francisco, Denver, Salt Lake, Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, etc.

On the long jobs the men would move their family to the vicinity of the work and a great many of them never left Puget Sound country, where they bought little ranches and dairyed, tended orchards, raised gardens, etc. to give their worn out lungs and calloused hands a chance to heal and recover before the next job come along.

…The head carver, or master carver, laid out and cut the first capital to what ever was the form of architecture chosen by the architect. The master carver on this job was an Italian, a fine featured man, highly skilled in the art. When he was working on something intricate he paid no attention to time or the whistle but often worked through lunch hour to carve out what ever was on his mind before he laid his tools down.

All the other carvers would follow his form, take measurements, and make templates and patterns from his work and apply it on the adjacent capitals.

The only carver I knew personally was a Scotchman by the name of Bruce from Seattle. He was a big, strong man who could cut and handle stone as well as carve. He and my father were on many fine jobs, traveled far, worked hard, suffered much to support their families, and took it all with a fine spirit.

God Bless their Souls,

Love,

Pa