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2528 E. Grand Ave.
If any surviving home in Everett represents the city’s “boom and bust” beginnings as well as its recovery
in the early 1900s, the McManus/Anthes house is it. Unlike most of the wealthy investors who planned
from hundreds of miles away, John E. McManus and his family — wife Harriet and twin sons John and
Michael — actually chose to live here. As secretary of the Mitchell Land Company, McManus helped
develop Everett’s Riverside neighborhood. He also began the Bank of Everett, the first Everett Herald
and served as state Senator, representing District 31, Snohomish County.
McManus chose a prominent lot near the Snohomish River and hired architect Frederick Sexton to
design this two-and-a-half story Queen Anne Shingle style home at a cost of $10,000, three times the
amount of other expensive homes at that time. Construction began in 1892, at the height of Everett’s
boom, and the home was completed the following year with a round two-story tower, a one-story
atrium and two large porches. Kitchen, pantry, dining room, parlor, music and sewing rooms and a den
were on the ground floor. The second floor contained a large hall surrounded by 7 rooms.
Although Everett incorporated in April of 1893, building and development stopped in a severe national
depression which began that same year, the hard times lasting until turn of the new century. Both the
Bank of Everett and the Everett Herald folded in the crisis. The McManus family moved on, setting up an
investment business, McManus and Son, in Seattle.
For a time, the house served as rectory of Trinity Church.
The Anthes Years
Jacob Anthes purchased the home in 1908 and for years the house was known as the Anthes Mansion.
Pioneer Anthes left Germany at age 15 and settled on the south end of Whidbey Island in 1880 where he
ran a store, founded the town of Langley and served as postmaster.
As the national economy improved in the early 1900s, the Everett community again aspired to be a
major industrial city, this time backed by railroad billionaire James J. Hill. Jacob Anthes, his wife Leafy
and children Cora, Howard and Samuel, moved to Everett where Jacob began investing in real estate. A
number of homes in the Riverside district were built by Anthes and used as rentals. From newspaper
stories, both Jacob and Leafy enjoyed entertaining. During World War I, the family carefully hid Jacob’s
German roots. Both Leafy and Cora contracted and survived the flu pandemic of 1918.
The Anthes family suffered with the rest of the nation during the 1930s Great Depression. By this time
they were elderly and both died in the 1930s. The family, however, held ownership of the home into the
1940s.
Today
Today Riverside is largely a working-class neighborhood where a number of Everett’s earliest built
homes have survived. For more information, photos and a tour map of the district, visit
the McManus section of the Riverside walking tour.
