On the east side of the 3600 block of Stone Way N, Tacos El Lago occupies a 748-square-foot building dwarfed by the orange-and-beige walls of Public Storage. The storage facility wraps around it on two sides, but the small restaurant property at 3620 Stone Way N remains separate.

Historian Sarah J. Martin of Historic Wallingford traced the block's beginnings to a 1901 plat filed by Corliss P. Stone and his wife, Elmira, along with John and Mary Bailey. Stone Way was labeled Stone Street. The narrow lots developed slowly, with fire-insurance maps showing only a couple of sheds in 1905 and no buildings in 1919. Lumber, millwork and fuel businesses filled the block through the 1920s.

The restaurant building began as a workshop. According to local historian Valarie Bunn, the Hocking Fuel & Lumber Company allowed Swedish immigrant Abraham Branlund to build it on the company's property and pay rent. The business was incorporated as the Stoneway Millwork Company in 1926, making wooden building components such as doors, cabinets and trim. Branlund later sold the business to cabinetmakers Thomas & Caskey.

In the 1960s, the building became Guy & Hulda's French Mill Café. Its later occupants included the Stoneway Café, the Rowdy Cowgirl and RoRo BBQ & Grill before Tacos El Lago. The Stoneway Café closed after a fire around 1983 and did not reopen until 1987, according to the Seattle Times.

The surrounding property followed a different path, from fuel and lumber to storage and distribution. Under the ownership of former Washington Gov. Albert Rosellini and his wife, Ethel, the land held a beer warehouse. The building known as the old Olympia Brewery warehouse was destroyed by fire in July 1987.

A 1990 short plat separated the small restaurant lot from the larger parcel sold that year to Public Storage Realty. Public Storage built its mini-warehouse in 1991. That property division left the former millwork shop standing independently beside the much larger development, preserving a small piece of Stone Way's industrial past through decades of restaurant use.

Originally reported by Wallyhood.