Dr. Herman Beardsley Bagley (1842-1899), an operative surgery and surgical disease specialist, arrived in Seattle in 1875. In the 1880s, he was part of the Lake Washington Improvement Company and one of several men to first conceive the Lake Washington Ship Canal. H.B. Bagley became quite wealthy through real estate and owned a home at 4th Avenue and Spring Street in Seattle, and a 200-acre farm in Renton. The artist, Harriet Foster Beecher (1854-1915), traveled to the West Coast to attend the San Francisco School of Design. She moved to Seattle in 1880 and married Captain Herbert Foote Beecher. In 1881, Beecher opened what is thought to be Seattle’s first art studio. She painted Indigenous life in oils and watercolors, portraits of early white Seattle settlers, and landscapes. Beecher played a critical role in expanding the community of artists in Seattle through her work as a teacher at the Territorial University, in her home in Seattle and later in Port Townsend.