ABSTRACT
Parrington’s attention to the business of history fostered not only “The Democratic Spirit in American Letters” and “The Spirit of Radicalism in Recent American Literature.” In February 1918 he turned to personal history and wrote the brief but illuminating “Autobiographical Sketch.” By the war’s end, two other events occurred that help delineate Parrington’s particular brand of radicalism. In May ground was broken for a new house, at 5248 Nineteenth Avenue N.E., in Seattle’s University District. Except for the feature of a first-floor study whose windows overlooked the gardens in back, the dwelling was indistinguishable from much other modern housing. Leafing through the blueprints, one feels the romantic days of Stuart Forbes and William Morris were gone, replaced by the practical concerns of family care and, perhaps, a wish to present a smooth surface to an inquisitive campus world. Architecturally, it was a democratic little house, designed to fit in with its neighbors, although what went on in the confines of the study was often at odds with the appearance of settled conventionality. The Nineteenth Avenue house was Parrington’s mid-1910s version of his 1903 article “The Lack of Privacy in American Village Homes.” 1
