Articles

From the west slope of Beacon Hill, the Lucile Street Bridge runs under Interstate 5 and dives in a massive U over the railroad tracks at the base of the hull, delivering cars, bicycles, and pedestrians onto the streets of Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood. Passing over it, the bridge registers as nothing more than infrastructure; interchangeable with any other stretch of cement that gets a person one place to another. But some thirty-five years ago, some people lived and wor

This project was completed in 2011 and was founded by a special project grant from King County 4Culture. One day in the fall of 1988 bulldozers arrived at the corner of 45th and Dawson, just west of the new Whitworth school building., and began raising seven houses in order to expand the school’s playfield to the west. The old Whitworth building had just been replaced and the school’s footprint had shifted to the west, all but eliminating the already cramped playground. The n

We have completed a project researching and documenting the history of community activism in the Rainier Valley. We were interested in tracing the roots of our current community issues and organizations back to the 1970s. Mikala Woodward and John Hoole dug through information at Municipal Archives, the Seattle Public Library, and in a marvelous collection of documents and slides donated by Rodney Herold, co-founder of SESCO (South End Seattle Community Organization). They rec

John Hoole and I began our exploration of community activism in the Rainier Valley with a simple question: How do ordinary people affect positive change in their communities? The Rainier Valley has a long tradition of civic activism, dating back at least as far as the petition filed by the ladies of Columbia City in 1905, urging the Town Council to close the local pool room on Sundays and at 11 pm the rest of the week. We were particularly curious about the period from 1970 t

Community organizing starts with problems—a rat infested apartment, the steady drip drip from the ceiling of an elementary school after a storm, an intersection with no stop might where a car hits somebody’s daughter. By the time the Southeast Seattle Community Organization (SESCO) set up shop in the summer of 1975, many Rainier Valley residents were fed up with all the little problems and had come to the conclusion that they were the victims of the city’s neglect or worse, o

Kubota Garden Entrance Gate - photo by Laurel Mercury Most first-time visitors to the garden are amazed to find a mature 20-acre garden located in a residential neighborhood a few blocks from the southern city limits of Seattle. The story of the garden is also amazing. It is the creation of Fujitaro Kubota and his family and unique to the Pacific Northwest. The Historical and Economic Background The story begins in Meiji Japan, with the rapid westernization and industrializat

2010 marks the 100th year of operation for the Lakewood Seward Park Community Club Take a look at the Seward Park peninsula today and...

In the 2008-09 school year, fifty 6th grade students from the New School explored the rich tapestry of faith traditions in the Rainier...

Children's issues were deemed an appropriate arena for women: Washington Women started voting in school elections in 1890. The Rainier...

Women were not given the vote; they earned it.

This exhibit was created in 2009 in conjunction with the Washington State History Society's Exhibit, "Women's Votes, Women's Voices"....

When Marion Southard married Phillip Weiss in 1926, she gave up her career as a social worker in order to raise her children. Back then,...

A hundred years ago, women's roles in the public sphere often grew out of their experience as wives and mothers at home: women worked as...

This photo essay was created by Eleanor Boba Early Beginnings In the beginning, baseball was everywhere. Nowadays when we think about...

"We decided to make a quilt. It’s cool. It shows all kind of things that happened in history in this neighborhood. We learned to work...

In the spring of 2005, a group of fourth and fifth graders at Orca @ Columbia School researched the history of the stream that used to...

Audio recording of the song "Pioneer of the Valley," sung at the 1981 annual meeting of the Columbia Pioneers.

The one room Lakewood Grade School located at 48th Ave S and Snoqualmie Street taught only 1st and 2nd graders from 1916 to 1927. RVHS...

It was a Sunday in 1906 and the Columbia Hotel’s elegant dining room, with white linen tablecloths and floral centerpieces, was featuring...