This $4.9 Million Tudor Revival Seattle Home Was Owned by a Lumber Heiress Turned Media Pioneer

A historic dwelling that once housed a Seattle trailblazer just hit the market.

Built at the dawn of America’s Jazz Age in 1919, the Bullitt Mansion is the former residence of late lumber heiress and media maven Dorothy Stimson Bullitt. Before moving into the three-story abode on Capitol Hill, she and her family famously took up residence at the Stimson-Green Mansion on First Hill, which her father, Charles D. Stimson, commissioned architect Kirtland Cutter to build after his lumber business skyrocketed during the Klondike gold rush.

By the early 1930s, after spending time in New York, Bullitt moved back to Seattle and began managing the family’s downtown real estate holdings following her father and brothers’ deaths. She bought what today is known as the Bullitt Mansion in 1948, a year after purchasing a failing radio station with no listeners that she revitalized, initially by playing classical tunes. Bullitt also bought Seattle’s only television station in 1949, going on to acquire a handful of stations from Portland to Honolulu as president of King Broadcasting Corporation. She was the first woman in the U.S. to buy and operate a TV station.

Bullitt’s former Jacobean Revival mansion is currently on the market for $4.9 million with Edward Krigsman and Mary Christine Mansour of Windermere Real Estate. It underwent renovations in 2023 that allowed interior designer Shannon Adamson to pay homage to the Golden Age via a speakeasy-inspired bar and a vivid array of decorative wallpapers presenting a variety of organic and geometric shapes in black, gold, and teal.

Box hedges and colorful perennials accent the property’s gated stone courtyard, just ahead of the arched entrance. Hardwood flooring spans the foyer with a grand staircase, which is set next to the fireside formal living room with built-in shelving and moody steel-gray walls. The nearby dining room seats eight with direct access to a sunroom that features red brick flooring, while the eat-in kitchen spills onto a spacious patio.

Each of the five bedrooms is unique. The green wallpapeer with illustrated flower petals in one of the second floor en-suite bedrooms is worth noting, as is the private study within another much more calmly decorated guest bedroom across the hall. The primary suite includes a large, compartmentalized bath.

A bedroom beneath a cathedral ceiling and a spa-like bathroom are joined on the third floor by a casual lounge with a fireplace, while the family/games room is tucked down on the basement level next to a dashing, speakasy-style bar with backlit displays for collectors’ bottles. A deluxe guest suite, or perhaps an alternate primary suite, is just ahead with a massive marble-clad bathroom that houses dual vanities and two glass-encased showers. Elsewhere are a spacious gym, a home office, and a backyard with multiple stone-paved terraces, an infrared sauna, and a cold plunge.

In addition to its only-in-Seattle provenance, the Bullitt Mansion, which records show last sold in 2020 for $3.92 million, reportedly also once served as the urban oasis of late former Starbucks’ CEO Orin Smith.

Click here for more photos of the Seattle residence.