Want to step back in time? Tour this Olympia home where one family lived for nearly 150 years

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story included the wrong day of the week for tours.

The Bigelow House Museum, closed since March 2020, will once again welcome visitors beginning Sunday, June 4.

The 1850s Carpenter Gothic house in Olympia’s northeast neighborhood is well known because suffragist Susan B. Anthony once dined there, but its significance goes beyond that.

When it was built for territorial legislator Daniel Bigelow and teacher Ann Elizabeth White Bigelow, the house stood alone on a bluff above Budd Inlet. Olympia grew up around it, as photos in the house show.

While the house was closed to visitors during the pandemic, the Olympia Historical Society and Bigelow House Museum continued restoration, preservation and presentation work. “The exhibits have been reimagined,” said Jean Wilkinson of the museum’s board.

“We’ve attempted to make the house look more lived in, not so museum like,” said David Goularte, another board member. In the dining room, for example, the table is set for dinner.

There are a few new “occupants” on the tour, too — life-size cardboard cutouts of some of the Bigelow family. There’s even a cutout of suffragist Susan B. Anthony, who came for dinner in 1871 and wrote about the experience in her diary. “We wanted to give better visuals of the people who lived here in the 1800s,” Wilkinson said.

Also newly restored and opened are a bedroom and a hall on the second floor. Other upstairs rooms were opened just a few years before the pandemic, said Goularte, who has overseen the design of the museum since restoration began in 1995.

He describes himself as “a house detective.” Among his tasks: peeling off layers of wallpaper and choosing new paper that matches or mimics what was found in the house during the early years.

While the wallpaper is new, all of the furnishings and other items — from dishes to games to musical instruments to baskets woven by Squaxin people — belonged to members of the Bigelow family, who occupied the house from 1860 to 2005. In fact, when the restoration and preservation of the house began, the last residents, descendants Daniel and Mary Ann Bigelow, were still living upstairs in private rooms.

“What’s unique about the collection is that it’s not only the house that tells the story of the family but also the items in the house,” Wilkinson said. “We have not purchased any period pieces to bring in to display.

“This is a family that occupied this house continuously for about 150 years — our generations. We are able to draw on the things that they actually owned and used to tell the story.”

Bigelow House Museum

• What: The 1850s house reopens for tours, which now include rooms not previously open to the public.

• When: Tours begin at 1, 2 and 3 p.m. Sundays, June 4 and 11, and the first and second Sundays of each month thereafter.

• Where: 918 Glass Ave. NE, Olympia

• Admission: $5 general admission, $2 for children and youths, or a maximum of $15 per family. Admission is free for Olympia Historical Society and Bigelow House Museum members.

• More information: https://olympiahistory.org/bigelow-house-museum/

• Also: Tours include stairs, and visitors under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.