Kirkman House: A Bolton Cattleman's Victorian Legacy
Washington
William Kirkman left Bolton, England at mid-century, made his fortune in the cattle trade of the American West, and in eighteen seventy-six began building one of the most elaborate private homes in Walla Walla. The mansion, which the architect Freeman Allen designed, is considered one of the Northwest's most outstanding Victorian structures, built for a man who wanted his new country to know exactly where he stood.
Three generations of Kirkmans lived here before the family gave the property to Whitman College in nineteen nineteen. It later became a museum, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-four, and today stands as a restored period house museum. It is the house of a man who had arrived.
