The Night the Old Kirkland Civic Center Burned Down

The spectacular nighttime inferno that burned down the old wooden Kirkland Civic Center was huge news back in April of 1967.

I can remember my father talking about how high the flames shot up after he and a friend drove down and watched–as I recall it was a Friday night.

Kirkland Police officers rescued six people from the fire. Lt. Jim Armstrong was the first on the scene. According to a front-page story in the Seattle Times the next day, Armstrong knocked down a door and rescued 47-year-old Willie LaBrie, a local coach who lodged in the center.

Willie and his brother Euclid “Euc” LaBrie were well-known local coaches and Little League supporters in Kirkland and Redmond. If memory serves me well, one of them also conducted an orchestra that played regularly for dances down at the Redmond Oddfellows Hall.

While Armstrong was helping LaBrie, another patrol car arrived and officers helped rescue a family of five that also lived in the center. The man of the family, the Christiansons, was a Kirkland Parks employee.

No one perished in the fire, but the loss was tragic nonetheless, at least in an historic sense, because the three-story center had been built in 1937 by the WPA. That was the Works Progress Administration, a “New Deal” agency that put millions to work during the Depression, building various structures for use by communities across America. The not far away is today the last remaining of several WPA structures built in Kirkland.

A large crowd gathered to watch the fire, and according to the Times story police had trouble controlling it. Four people were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

The site of the civic center is today’s , where most visitors stroll or pass by, undoubtedly unaware of the drama that played out that fiery night 44 years ago.