Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Evans: Pretty much. I would hope they
would tell me where they were going.
Hughes: In 1973, the Legislature finally
approved money ($600,000) for the
renovation of the Mansion.
Evans: And we had to move out of the
house for a year while they gutted it.
Hughes: Where did you live?
Evans: Well, we went house hunting
for a family of six for a year, fully
furnished, and there just was very
little available in Olympia at that time.
We were just all over the place trying
to figure out what we were going to
do. Finally somebody came up with
the Ingham House, which was located
Dan and Nancy at a press conference around the time the Legislature
finally appropriated money to remodel the mansion. Evans family album
where the Visitor’s Center is now. It’s a lovely Georgian home that Dr. Ingham had built
many, many years before that several families had lived in. Then the state bought it and
it was sitting there being used as an office. So we went over there and looked. It was a
wonderful house, but they had put in those egg-carton light fixtures on the ceiling, and it
was all desks and chairs and awful – that sort of thing. But they decided that we could fix it
up a bit. So we did. We did some drapes in the living room and dining room. We brought
the furniture over from the Mansion that would fit. It had four bedrooms. On the third
floor, it had sort of an attic with the slanted ceiling and wooden paneling. That’s where the
two older boys slept. It was great. It had a bathroom. And it was still in the neighborhood
so the kids didn’t lose their friends and could still walk to school.
Hughes: And their Dad could still walk to work.
Evans: Sure. It all worked out very, very well, and it didn’t cost a lot of money. So we lived
there for a year while they were gutting the Mansion. I mentioned the two thermostats
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