Han's Pavilion

There's a large circular building on top of old Flat-Top that sits empty and unfinished, looking down out over West Richland as far as Benton City in one direction and clear across the Columbia River in the other. Look up when you're out along Van Geisen sometime and you can't miss it. Just sitting up there.

It was built by a man, an older man who knew how to build things, for a young woman in his life who knew how to paint and needed someplace to hang the pictures she painted. First he built her a fine, glass-walled studio onto the back of his large house just down the hill on King Street there in West Richland, but pretty soon she needed more space so he began construction on that circular pavilion up on Flat-Top. This was about 25 or so years ago. At the time, there was only a water reservoir up there and of course the large white cross that you might remember from when you were a kid and you'd look out the back window of your folks' car as you passed below on Van Geisen and see that big white cross sitting up there on the hill.

That was a long time before the pavilion.

When I moved out to King Street in West Richland about 7 years ago, the house I rented belonged to Sandy Barreth, a classmate from '65'. Very nice place. Large, up on a hill, with long, sloping lawns and a perfect view of the Yakima River below and Flat-Top rising off to the left. The house over on the property next door was also large and lovely--splendid, really--with a view that was the envy of the neighborhood. But it stood empty, abandoned. The once-sculpted shrubs had gone wild, and the two-tiered lawn was scorched and dead. The row of high studio windows all across the back of the house, opening onto a commanding view of the countryside, were clouded over and darkend with dust and grime. If it didn't look spooky, it at least looked sad in the way deserted houses in rural settings can look.

"Who lives over there next door?" I asked Sandy as she was showing me around the property my first day as her tenant. "Looks like it used to be a pretty nice place."

"Oh, it's a beautiful place," she said. "You should see the inside. I mean, it's a mess now, but the fella who built it really knew what he was was doing."

Then she pointed off towards Flat-top in the near distance. "See that round building on the top of flat-top over there? He built that too—or started to. He was building it for his girlfriend. She was an artist. Really young. He built her a studio in the back of the house here also," she said, pointing across the wooden fence towards the empty house, "and then he was building her that big gallery thing up on the hill where she could show her paintings, but before he could finish it, she went away and never came back."

"Went away?"

"Yes, just moved away. Back to New York, I think. Maybe she had family there. I don't know the whole story, except that he stopped working on that building and just left it sitting there."

"What about him?"

Sandy looked at me like she didn't understand what I'd said.

" What happened to him?" I repeated. "Your neighbor here."

"His name was Hans. He kept on here for a couple years or so after she left, then he got real sick and died a little while after that. The house has been sitting here like this for about 5 or 6 years now. I'm not even sure who owns it, but I heard it's up for sale."

So I moved into Sandy's house on King Street, and sometime during my second year there a very nice fellow named Craig moved in with his family and over the course of the next couple years undertook the complete restoration of the property, top to bottom.

Hans would have been proud.

But the unfinished pavilion is still sitting up there on Flat-Top. There is no window glass in the openings. And no sign of life.

Yet.

I've recently heard rumors a local tribe has puchased the property, and that sounds to me like a perfect fit. Maybe Han's pavilion will finally get finished.

In the meantime, I'll keep looking up the hill there whenever I pass by.

TDK '65''

• Last Time Around
  
• Charlie Nevins
  
• Young Men And Fire
  
• Austin Healy
  
• Cathy
  
• David River's Birthday
  
• Han's Pavilion
  
• Muscles, Our Neighbor
  
• John Browne, Learning to Dance
  
• Your Brother Mark Browne
  
• Buster
  
• Celluloid Lies
  
• Nuked
  
• Learning to Box
  
• Dog and Goose
  
• Buses and Such
  
• Stealing
  
• Hookybobbing
  
• Stiles Old Upstairs Apartment
  
• Sign Of The Time
  
• Learning to Drive