Fred Anhalt

Frederick William Anhalt (March 6, 1896 – July 17, 1996)[1] was a builder and contractor[2] who constructed many distinguished rental apartment buildings in Seattle, Washington in the 1920s and early 1930s.

In 1993, the Seattle Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) awarded Anhalt an honorary membership in recognition of excellence in residential design.

These buildings were designed to provide members of the growing middle class with compelling alternatives to single family homes at a time when many central Seattle neighborhoods were becoming increasingly urbanized.

The basic plan—individual living spaces oriented around a common, open courtyard—made it easier to make effective use of the natural light and existing vegetation on the building site.

Many Anhalt apartments featured built-in refrigerators, electric dish washers, wood-burning fireplaces, high ceilings, hand-carved woodwork, and double floors for soundproofing.

Anhalt achieved this balance through vertical integration and by taking advantages of efficiencies of scale—by centralizing design and construction within the same firm, and placing large orders with local suppliers of brick, tile and other building materials.

[16] Due to the rapid pace of construction and the increasing scale of his apartment projects, Anhalt found himself over-leveraged during the early years of the Great Depression, as demand for new middle-class housing waned.

[7] He ultimately left the field in 1942 to open a Shur-Gro Nursery,[2] which won a special award for landscape design from the Seattle chapter of the American Rhododendron Society in 1954.