Ezra Meeker Mansion, Victorian mansion in Puyallup, United States.
The Ezra Meeker Mansion is a four-story house with white clapboard siding and ornate wooden trim around every window and beneath the eaves. Tacoma architects Farrell and Darmer built it between 1886 and December 1890 to Eliza Jane Meeker's specifications. It had hot and cold running water on all four floors, and its second-floor bathroom was the first with running water in the Puyallup Valley.
Eliza Jane Meeker commissioned the house in 1886 from Tacoma architects Farrell and Darmer, and it was finished in December 1890, when the Meekers cooked their first meal there. Built with hot and cold running water on all four floors, it was the first house in the Puyallup Valley with a second-floor bathroom. After the hop crisis and the Panic of 1893, the family took in boarders, and from 1915 the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic used it as a home for Civil War widows and orphans.
The mansion was bought in 1915 for $8,000 by the Washington and Alaska Chapter of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic as a home for widows and orphans of the Civil War, mostly elderly women whose fathers, brothers, uncles or husbands had served. By the 1920s the Ladies added an annex on the east side, joined to the house through the dining room and library.
The house is operated as a museum by the Puyallup Historical Society, which bought the surrounding land in 1970 and began restoring the building that year. Parts of the interior are still being restored, so some rooms may be seen in unfinished condition. The 1920s annex on the east side, once added by the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, is not part of the 1886–1890 Farrell and Darmer house.
The mansion grounds hold trees that Ezra Meeker imported directly from England, including holly and a ginkgo tree that still grow on the property today. These living plants connect visitors to the personal travels and tastes of the original owner.
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