By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Millionaires Jack Benaroya and Samuel Stroum live on the top two floors of First Hill Plaza, the neighborhood's tallest condominium. Their penthouse condos are each assessed at more than $2.7 million.

Benaroya, a real estate developer, and his wife, Becky, contributed $15 million for building the downtown concert hall that is due to open in September 1998. Stroum, a University of Washington regent, is known for his lifelong support of the arts, education and civic causes.

Priscilla "Patsy" Bullitt Collins, daughter of King Broadcasting founder Dorothy Stimson Bullitt, lives a block away in a grand, older building.

In 1986, after moving to First Hill from Edmonds, Collins bought her grandparents' First Hill mansion, the Stimson/Green House, and has spent about $600,000 restoring its elegance.

"I'm glad no one told me how much it would be. But I'm glad I did it. This way, so many people can enjoy it," says Collins.

The house is a showpiece of turn-of-the-century First Hill architecture and is rented for catered parties, weddings, memorial services and corporate retreats. The Stimson/Green House represents one of only a handful of the 40 original mansions on the hill that remain intact.

Several months before her mother died in 1989, Collins says she held a birthday party for her at the Stimson-Green house. Her mother, who was celebrating her 97th birthday, remembered how the furniture used to be arranged and how, as a child, she could not slide down the bannister because of an ornate newel post at the bottom.

Dorothy Bullitt also told the story of how two orphaned black bear cubs came to live with the Stimson family. "My great-grandmother took in two newborn bear cubs from a logger. The family raised them and would take them on walks, down muddy streets and wooden sidewalks," Collins says with a laugh.

They eventually outgrew their welcome and went to Woodland Park Zoo.

Before the Stimson family moved to First Hill it owned a home on lower Queen Anne. Collins says her grandfather rode a horse between Queen Anne and Ballard where he had built a shingle mill at the urging of Capt. William Ballard.

Continued:

• Pioneers left distinct flavor in Seattle's first neighborhood
• Neighborhood is one of city's most pedestrian-friendly