Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 12, December 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Harold's Fine Lighting:

Iluminating the North End since 1957

By JAMES BUSH

There's a whole lot going on behind the North 45th Street storefront that houses Harold's Fine Lighting.

The forest of ceiling-mounted light fixtures visible from the sidewalk are just the beginning. The store continues back from the street with smaller rooms filled with stock. There's a full repair shop, a large shade section, and a workshop where the store makes its own light fixtures and shades. The store is renovating another storefront to the west, which will soon house the company conference room, a showroom for contractor sales, and a parts storeroom.

The store's large stock and many unique items give customers the opportunity to find the right fixture, while making it a fun place to work, says manager Rick Schneider. "It's not like working for a box store, where you just sell stuff off the shelves."

Schneider, now in his 17th year as an employee, says there are four others among the store's 16-person staff who have worked there at least a decade. Not that they hold the record: owners Kim and Cheryl Hansen are part of four generations of the Hansen family that has worked in the lighting business. Kim started working in the store with his father, store founder Harold, some 30 years ago. Harold got his start working in his own father's Phinney Ridge store, Hansen Light & Shade (still owned by other family members) before founding Harold's Lamp & Shade in 1957.

Harold's Lamp & Shade (as it was originally known) was first located down North 45th Street in the building now occupied by the second auditorium of the Guild 45th Theater. In the early 1960s, the shop moved into the existing space at 1912 N. 45th St. A historic photograph in Schneider's office shows the building in open-air mode as the 45th Street Central Market, with roll-down doors rather than glass windows up front.

Originally, the business took up about a quarter of the space it now occupies, says Schneider. "As businesses moved out on either side of him, he kept expanding out."

As the space has expanded, so has the scope of the business: Harold's manufactures light fixtures and shades for commercial projects, department stores, and other businesses (a just-completed order of lampshades for the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, was sitting in the shop during our tour).

Customers often bring in items, such as an antique vase or a basket, to be made into one-of-a-kind lamps.

Harold's also restores classic lighting fixtures and even designs its own. A fixture hanging in Schneider's office that seemed like a restored older design at first glance is actually a Harold's creation. "It kind of shows you what we can do," he says.

The expanded range of products and services led the Hansens to rename the expanded store Harold's Fine Lighting.

Another tip as to the store's range of offerings is the bookcase of catalogs which fills an entire wall in the manager's office. "We certainly can order whatever anybody wants,"Schneider says.

One Harold's tradition Schneider has played a major role in maintaining is the store's November sale of Tiffany lamps. The classic lamps with stained glass shades are an American art form, he notes.

The November sale began nine years ago when a California supplier sent up a truckload of Tiffany lamps one year, then proved so popular that it became an annual event at Harold's. When the supplier died two years ago, the store decided to purchase extra stock and continue the tradition.

"Every year, it's bigger," Schneider says of the Tiffany lamp sale. "We've got people waiting outside the door when we open."

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Harold's Fine Lighting is located at 1912 N 45th St. in Wallingford. For more information, call 633-2557.