Finding enough stuff wasn’t the problem. At a mere 236 square feet, the World’s Smallest Floating Homes Museum, opening June 14th on Lake Union, teems with archival material. Board meeting minutes, newsletters, and—um, is that neighbor Mary’s pot roast recipe?

“It was just mounds of paper,” Floating Homes Association (FHA) President Stafford Green tells me. “Thousands and thousands of sheets of paper. They were pack rats early on.” Over the past three years, Green has sifted through the ephemera, digitized it, and pulled out anecdotes to highlight in the museum, which tells the story of nearly a century and a half of living—and fighting to stay—atop the lake. 

Housed in the recently renovated Keasler Cottage (named for Bill Keasler, FHA President from 1981–2010), the museum’s making reflects the quirks, struggles, and perks of houseboat living. The place had been neglected for more than a decade. The stringers were rotten (those are the wooden beams in the foundation, for those unversed in houseboat lingo). I-5 pushed soil from the hillside downward, causing the cottage to sit half on land, half on water. And it desperately needed a new coat of paint.

But luckily—just like if you needed help shoveling snow off your roof or carrying in your groceries—the neighborhood never hesitates to pitch in. “It’s the nicest community,” Green smiles, “everybody’s helping and painting and making it look nice.”

Visitors can expect to learn about the bootleggers, brothels, and bloodshed of the early days; the fight against demolition and the founding of the FHA in the midcentury; and local characters such as Umbrella Man, an eccentric Civil War veteran whose likeness featured in The Seattle Times’s cartoon weather report. 

It also gives guests a chance to experience that unique blend of outdoors and urban that residents so greatly appreciate. “You’re living in nature with fish, beavers, and bald eagles, yet somehow you’re in the middle of the city.” Unless you live there or you attended last year’s Floating Homes Tour (which I covered here), most Seattleites don’t know how magical this feeling is.

If you’d like to learn more about the city’s storied floating communities, read Adam Woog’s Still Afloat, available here.

See you at the grand opening this Sunday, 6/14, from 11:00 am – 2:30 pm (or swing by any Sunday in June and July)! There will be live string music from Holy Harmonies and complimentary chair massages from Sublime Spa.

2329 Fairview Avenue E, Seattle, WA. It’s best to walk, bike, or take public transportation (kayaks and paddleboards also acceptable!), as parking is limited.