Mottman Building

Built in 1888. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

From the record

“The Mottman Building is an historic commercial building located at the Northwest corner of Capitol Way N & 4th Ave W in downtown Olympia, Washington. Originally constructed in 1888 as the Olympic Block by Samuel Williams for Toklas & Kaufman to house their department store, the building was remodeled and expanded to its current state in 1911 by prominent Olympia realtor and eventual mayor George Mottman, whose own department store, the Mottman Mercantile, occupied the building until 1967.”
Wikipedia article Mottman Building, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 68 National Register listings published here for Thurston County · listed in 1983 · category: Building · built in 1888.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. 101-105 N. Capitol Way, Olympia, 98501
When was it listed? June 1983
Category. building
Also known as. Downtown Olympia MRA (AD); Downtown Olympia MRA
Census division. Olympia
When was it built? 1888
National Register reference number. 83003354 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

81 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 81 fires within 5 miles of Mottman Building between 1992 and 2020, burning about 26 acres in total. None started naturally. 5 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	31
Recreation and ceremony	19
Debris and open burning	12
Equipment and vehicle use	5
Arson/incendiarism	5
Fireworks	4
Smoking	2
Misuse of fire by a minor	1
Railroad operations and maintenance	1
Other causes	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
8 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	I-5 TRAIL SE
8 September 2011	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	MALL FIRE
8 September 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
6 September 1993	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
5 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	TROSPER LAKE
30 September 1993	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
3 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	EXIT 108
3 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	ORGANIC

Every fire recorded in Thurston County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 21 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 21 workings within 5 miles of Mottman Building: 21 past producers. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Stone, Dimension. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Tumwater Sand & Gravel Pit	Stone, Dimension, Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Delphi Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Mottman Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Webber Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
29th Street Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Ames Huntly Road Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Capitol Lake Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Decatur St. Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Mottman Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Thurston County

Storms near this property

2 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Olympia, the town this property stands in, in 2 storm reports between 2001 and 2006: 1 funnel cloud, 1 heavy rain. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
January 2006	Heavy Rain	Olympia	$30,000	no account filed
May 2001	Funnel Cloud	Olympia	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Thurston County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Olympia National Bank	under 500 feet	1987
Olympia Downtown Historic District	under 500 feet	2004
Jeffers Studio	0.1 miles	1987
Capital Savings and Loan Association	0.1 miles	2018
Town Square	0.2 miles	1987
Elks Building	0.2 miles	1988

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 83003354 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Thurston County	All 68 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.