The House, the Architect & the Town That Wasn't There

In 1942, William J. Bain helped make one of America's most important bomber factories disappear. Fourteen years earlier, he had designed a quiet Tudor on a hillside in Denny-Blaine. That house is 115 Dorffel Drive East, and it is still here.

This is the story of an architect, a house, and a town that was never really there.

The Architect

William James Bain was born in 1896 and grew up in Seattle, where his father worked as a contractor. At 19 he was already apprenticing with local architects, learning the trade from the drafting table up.

On January 10, 1923, Washington issued its first architect licenses. Several architects were licensed that day, and Bain, first in alphabetical order, received Certificate No. L1: the state's very first. He had helped campaign for that licensing law.

A year later he opened his own practice and was busy from the start. Through the 1920s and '30s he designed many homes across the Seattle area.

The House

In 1928, in the middle of that run, Bain designed 115 Dorffel Drive East. The house sits at the end of a long private drive, tucked into the hillside of Denny-Blaine, one of Seattle's most private lakeside enclaves.

It is a Tudor in brick and shingle, with leaded-glass windows, a classic fireplace, window seats that frame views of Lake Washington, Bellevue and the Cascades, and a brick-walled courtyard hidden from the street.

The house has been thoughtfully reimagined for modern life, but its bones are Bain's: a home designed to feel generous inside and to keep to itself outside.

The Town That Wasn't There

After Pearl Harbor, Seattle feared an attack from the air, and Boeing's Plant 2 on the Duwamish was an obvious target. It was where the B-17 Flying Fortress was being built. In 1942 the State of Washington named Bain its camouflage director.

The solution was as detailed as a movie set. Across roughly 23 acres of factory roof rose a fake residential neighborhood: plywood houses, painted streets, lawns, trees and even small cars. From the air, the plant looked like just another quiet suburb.

The effort drew on many hands. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the disguise, and Hollywood set designer John Stewart Detlie is also credited with the design. The camouflage stayed up through the war and came down in 1946.

The architect who knew exactly what a Seattle home should look like had helped build a convincing one out of plywood, while his real ones stood quietly across the city.

A Quiet Hand Behind Seattle

Bain's influence reached far beyond a single street. In 1940 he joined the team that designed Yesler Terrace, Seattle's first public housing. In 1943 he became a founding partner of Naramore, Bain, Brady & Johanson, the firm known today as NBBJ.

Yet he never left houses behind. In 1947 he formed a separate partnership with Harrison Overturf devoted to residential design, and he kept working until his death in 1985. His son, William J. Bain Jr., became a leading architect at NBBJ, and once recalled spending five days measuring a house beside Viretta Park in Denny-Blaine for one of his father's remodels.

His Best-Kept Secret

Nearly a century later, 115 Dorffel Drive East remains what Bain built it to be: private, gracious, and quietly remarkable.