As described by Lake Union historian Dick Wagner (1933-2017): Seattle in the late 1800s saw the opening of a bevy of boathouses, or liveries, often located where streetcar lines met lakeshores. Glorious examples of the shipwright's art, some nearly a century old, can still be seen in Northwest waters. Few companies survived, but their exceptional vessels were built to last.
Another major factor in their demise was the withering of the close relationships that had existed between builders and customers of earlier generations. Ready supplies of quality materials, a skilled workforce, and the growth of a middle class eager to take to the water sustained these builders for decades, but mass production of fiberglass boats and skyrocketing wood prices foretold the end for most. These companies provided well-paying jobs for generations of shipwrights, most of whom learned their trade through union apprenticeships and a boat-building school opened by the Seattle school system in 1936. The opening of Seattle's Lake Washington Ship Canal in 1917 spurred the development on Lake Union of a number of boat-building yards that for more than 40 years used traditional methods and materials to produce now-classic sailboats and motor cruisers.
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