Rosario Mansion

Text

In 1904, shipbuilding magnate and twice elected mayor of Seattle, Robert Moran, was told by doctors that he had a heart condition and had six months to live. After a trip to Europe where he consulted with other medical professionals and read medical books, he diagnosed himself as being overworked, mentally exhausted and needing a break. It was during a cruise through the San Juans that he took notice of Orcas Island and decided to start buying property there. The first purchase he made was a lumber mill, house, and farm owned by E.P. and Andrew Newhall. The house and surrounding area was named Newhall when Moran purchased it, but he renamed it Rosario after the strait between the islands and the mainland.

Moran returned to work but continued to secretly buy land on Orcas Island, eventually ending up with over 5,000 acres, including most of Mount Constitution. In 1906, he moved his family permanently to Rosario and set about building his new home. Moran rejected the original plans for a standard two-story, wood frame house, and took over the design himself. Not a man to go in half on any project, Moran went full steam ahead in building an elaborate five-story, 54-room mansion with the same attention to quality and detail as he had in his shipbuilding business.

Built in the Arts and Crafts style, the house was an architectural wonder. Its foundation was born out of the very bedrock it stood on. A swimming pool, bowling alley, and billiard tables were all embedded into the rock in the basement. The doors of the rooms were handmade from mahogany and required special hinges that Moran invented. The mansion’s floors were made of teakwood imported from the South Seas, and took two years to finish. The crowning jewel of the mansion was the music room that spanned two levels and boasted a massive pipe organ that Moran liked to “play” to wake up guests every morning. Moran could not play the organ but pretended to as the organ played like a player piano using paper rolls.

In 1909, the Moran family was finally able to move into their new home. They lived there for 23 years, until the death of Moran’s wife, Melissa, in 1932. Rosario Mansion was purchased in 1938 by Donald Rheem, co-founder of Rheem Manufacturing in California, who used the estate as a vacation home. His wife, Alice, despite dying in California in 1956, is said to have returned as a ghost to make it her permanent residence, still haunting the mansion to this day.