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Take a stroll through time with this 1908 photo of Rainier Avenue, looking East towards the heart of Columbia City between Edmonds Street on the left and Ferdinand Street to the right. Can you recognize what still stands more than 100 years later? Scroll down to test your Columbia City knowledge! View to the East along Rainier Ave. Photo by Ashel Curtis. UW Libraries, Special Collections, UW31146. The Toby Building – 4850 Rainier Ave S (Built 1907) Legend has it that Simeon Toby planned to build a bank in Hillman City but got off the streetcar in Columbia City to visit a friend and never left. With some persuasion, he opened the bank here instead. Toby’s Bank operated at this corner from 1903 to 1924 before moving across the street. Today, the building is home to State Farm. Phalen Hall – 4864 Rainier Ave S (Built 1892) Originally built by the Knights of Pythias as a two-story meeting hall, the building was purchased by Bill Phalen in 1900. He ran a grocery store downstairs and became a beloved community leader, starting the volunteer fire department, founding a local baseball team, and serving as Columbia City’s final mayor before annexation to Seattle in 1907. A 1941 fire destroyed the second story, but the first floor—protected by a sturdy oak dance floor—survived. Now home to Columbia City Bakery and Gather Consignment. Peirson House – 3815 S Ferdinand St (Built 189) Developer J.K. Edmiston sold Columbia City lots for $300—just $10 down and $10/month—as long as buyers built within a year. This home, owned by former mayor Van R. Peirson (1900–1902), is one of only four original houses still standing from that early wave of development. One of just two remaining homes on Ferdinand Street within the Columbia City Landmark District. Columbia Hotel – 4900 Rainier Ave S (Built 1891) German mason Joseph Hellenthal built Columbia City’s first brick building for his family, later converting it into a hotel. Guests included Buffalo Bill Cody. Over the years, the building hosted a dry goods store, a speakeasy, and a tavern called Slim’s. In 1997, Lottie Motts Coffee Shop opened, helping to usher in a new era of neighborhood revitalization. Today, it lives on as Lottie’s Lounge. 4901 Rainier Ave S (Built 1905 ) Constructed by H. Harlow A. Hastings—attorney, mayor, and early Columbia City resident—this brick corner building has seen decades of neighborhood history. It housed everything from a drugstore and post office to a grocery store and a popular 1950s diner. Currently home to Pagliacci Pizza.

Children on Ferdinand Street, standing in front of the future Columbia Motor Co. site, 1903, Hall Summers Pioneer Collection [1993.001.0404] Taking In the View:  A photographer whose eye is on the children provides a record for the history archives of a slice of the Columbia City streetscape in early May 1903, looking north across Ferdinand Street with buildings along today’s Rainier Avenue South, then the Seattle, Renton & Southern Railway tracks, visible on the left. All aboard! The three-windowed gabled house in the center no longer exists (built in 1893). Behind the children is about where we find the Ferdinand Festival Street seating area now. Then, a long-dressed woman walked past vacant property on wooden planks. To the far left, the ornate top of the Knights of Pythias Hall can be seen in the distance, then owned by W.W. “Bill” Phalen. Upon his arrival in 1901, he had purchased the building and opened his Reliance General Store in the north storefront, offering delivery by horse and carriage. Phalen quickly made a name for himself in Columbia and was elected mayor twice. He founded the volunteer fire department, formed a local baseball team, and established the annual summer festival, Rainier Valley Fiesta. Looking again, a little peaked-roof wooden building blocks our view of Phalen’s grocery. Seattle photographer Asahel Curtis’s panorama taken from the west looking across Rainier offers an eyeful. Across from the two-story Columbia Hotel at the southeast corner of Rainier and Ferdinand Street, that small building sits with its storefront plastered with real estate advertising – Right Here Lakewood. Mount Baker resident Charles B. Dodge had replatted Lakewood for sale in 1903 through his Pioneer Square offices. He was also the owner of the property along Rainier where the little no-frills real estate office stood along the streetcar tracks.  Columbia City, Ferdinand St. and Rainier, vacant lot, future home of Columbia Motor Co., Asahel Curtis, Photographer, circa 1908, UW Special Collections, 31146 By 1904 Dodge had married his third wife and lived at the edge of Lake Washington in a home with five bedrooms, four baths, seven fireplaces and two servants. Today’s Lakewood Moorage property was once Dodge’s private boathouse. On the property where the real estate office was plus two lots to the north, the one-story brick Dodge Building was built in 1908 at a cost of $4,000. An early tenant in the southern storefront (today’s Geraldine’s Counter) was Goebel’s Cash Store, conducting business right across the streetcar tracks from the successful W.W. Phalen, Your Grocer. Before their marriage, Henry Goebel and Louisa Schmidt were both immigrants from Germany in the late 1800s and by 1891 Henry was running a grocery in Chicago according to the Polk city directory. The 1900 U.S. Census shows a “ Lizzie ” Schmidt, age 16, working as a grocery saleslady in Chicago which may have put her in the sightlines of Henry the grocer. Their daughter Minnie was born there in 1902 and by 1904 they had all moved on to Seattle, where they operated a grocery on Twelfth Avenue in central Seattle.  By 1905 the Goebels had a real estate contract for property in the City Gardens plat, near Rainier & South Walker Street. They could be found in Columbia City by 1909. Their cash grocery advertised household commodities, i.e., Goebel’s Best Coffee, 35 cents a pound, and Peter Pan brand toilet paper, 6 rolls for 25 cents. Those were the days.  An early Columbia resident, Harlow H.A. Hastings had served as the town’s first attorney in 1893 and mayor later in 1900. Hastings lived east of Rainier, up the hill on Angeline Street with his wife Minnie and their children in a big white house with a picket fence. In 1898 Hastings had Fraternity Hall built on the south side of Ferdinand Street west of Rainier (a parking lot now). A one-story brick building in an art deco style went up on the corner in 1905 (now Pagliacci Pizza, Off Alley and Rudy’s Barbershop) and called the Hastings Block. Old-timers long remembered Studley’s Drug Store there with a marble soda fountain and Tiffany lampshade. “ Just like downtown !” Making front page news in The Rainier Valley Times in September 1918, described as the “ biggest real estate deal in years, ” Henry Goebel had purchased these properties for $16,000. He would be moving the cash grocery from across Rainier into the Hastings Block and using the ground floor of the hall for his warehouse. As an aside, the newspaper goes on to describe Goebel as having “ quite recently improved lots which he owned directly in the rear of his present location by building the modern brick structure occupied by the Clark-Baker Auto Company .” Here the paper is describing what is now known as the Columbia Motor Company Building, built in 1917.   Back to the vacant property on Ferdinand Street in 1903, Henry Goebel had purchased those lots in June of 1916 for $3,000 (with a mortgage) from a man Templeton, of Tolt, Washington. His permit to build a masonry garage there for $4,000 was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in February 1917 and soon The Clark-Baker Company was offering “ skilled Ford men ” for “ a little adjusting now and then ” (Garage-Supplies-Repairs). They were authorized Ford dealers and advertised touring cars, runabouts and truck chassis shipped brand new from Detroit on order, assembly required.   A January 19, 1918, profile of Frank S. Clark, “Representative Men of Rainier Valley”, published in The Rainier Valley Times promotes the new business. The Clark-Baker Company consisted of Clark and his brother-in-law, Harry H. Baker, as partners with their father-in-law J.C. Weinberg also involved. Clark stated they had leased the new Ferdinand Street building for five years and could store up to 25 cars.  Baker managed the mechanics to “give all the service any Ford owner could desire” and Clark handled the sales; he was optimistically planning to order 250 cars for the year August 1917-1918 despite World War I restrictions on steel plus a 5% luxury tax on the purchase of new passenger cars.  Along with two mechanics, Pierre Weiss rounded out the team, a familiar face in Columbia City. Weiss was 15 years old when his father brought the family out from South Dakota in 1905. As a young man Pierre was one of Phalen’s volunteer firemen and played football and basketball with the Rainier Valley Athletic Club. In his early twenties, he ran a confectionery along Rainier Avenue in Columbia City that was said to have included sporting goods along with the sweets and cigars. His June of 1917 World War I draft card has him employed at Clark-Baker as salesman; his wartime service in France would cause but a short interruption until his discharge in March 1919.  Salesman Pierre Weiss standing with Ed Thanom at Clark-Baker Motor Co., 1001 South Jackson Street, October 1920. [RVHS 05.011-02H] After just three years, in August of 1920, Clark-Baker Company announced their move to Tenth Avenue & Jackson Street to sell and service their Fords. A city mechanic, L.E. Thompson leased the space at Goebel’s building on Ferdinand Street for a repair and storage shop. “Let Thompson Fix It” was his motto, offering gas, oils and greases as Columbia Auto Service.  But, wait, in late December 1922, The Seattle Daily Times reported that Clark-Baker would soon be returning to Ferdinand Street. The newly formed Columbia Motor Company with Pierre Weiss as the third partner would offer parts, service, tires and accessories as authorized Ford dealers. It was not long before Clark had made a trip to the Chevrolet factory in Portland to take a look. During the slack season that fall, Clark is quoted in The Rainier Valley Times, “Business in new cars is down because people in the valley are not real car buyers”. That year’s holiday advertisement asked, Why Not a Ford for Christmas?   3806 Ferdinand Street, Columbia Motor Co., 1930 [RVHS 2003.022.0007] Columbia Motor Company became the exclusive Chevrolet dealer for the Rainier District in January 1924, as General Motors challenged Henry Ford’s domination of the automobile market. The Model T had lost the public’s favor. “ Say it with Chevrolet !” was the slogan. The Chevrolet years led into the Dodge-Plymouth years through the mid 1940s. In the 1920s, the Goebels had settled into West Seattle, purchasing and developing commercial real estate, running a grocery at the junction, while leasing out their Columbia City properties.  As for 3806 South Ferdinand Street, after Henry Goebel’s death, Louisa Goebel owned the property until her death in 1967. The property was then inherited by daughter Minnie Foster and Minnie’s daughters. These three women held onto the property through the Boeing Bust until December of 1976, when they sold for $25,000 to a party of four.  And now, Rainier Valley Historical Society’s future home since just earlier this year, giving new purpose to the building, from storing autos last century to housing archives this, bringing to mind an old Columbia City promotion, Watch It Grow!  Project Team members: Katie McClure, John Bennett, and Tim Burdick, on-site - Summer 2025.

RVHS is proud to honor Estela Ortega as our 2025 History Maker, recognizing her over five decades of leadership in building community, advancing equity, and creating opportunities that have shaped the lives of thousands across Rainier Valley, Seattle, and beyond. Born in Harris, Texas, in 1950, Ortega grew up working in the cotton fields from the age of eight. Those early years, marked by hardship and resilience, instilled in her a lifelong empathy for others and a belief that dignity and justice must be fought for, not simply hoped for. In her early twenties, she became active in Houston’s grassroots movements, organizing for farmworkers’ rights, protesting the Vietnam War, registering voters, and helping underrepresented communities find their voice. Her path led her to El Paso in 1972, where she met fellow activist and Franklin High School teacher Roberto Maestas at a national Chicano conference. That meeting marked the beginning of a lifelong partnership in both life and purpose. Later that year, Ortega joined Maestas and a coalition of organizers in the occupation of the shuttered Beacon Hill Elementary School in Seattle, standing up for the preservation of bilingual education and community programs. Their peaceful protest resulted in the founding of El Centro de la Raza, “The Center for People of All Races”.  Under the leadership of Ortega and Maestas, El Centro de la Raza became a cornerstone for Southeast Seattle, offering support, education, and a welcoming space for people of all backgrounds. Over the years, El Centro has hosted everything from English and GED classes to tenant rights workshops, and cultural events like Día de los Muertos, powwows, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day marches.  When Maestas passed away in 2010, Ortega stepped into the role of Executive Director, carrying forward their shared vision. Under her leadership, El Centro has expanded its reach, most notably through the creation of Plaza Roberto Maestas, a 112-unit affordable housing and community development project that combines early learning, retail, and public gathering spaces in the heart of Beacon Hill. The project stands as a living symbol of what is possible when a community invests in itself. In recent years, Ortega has led the organization into a new chapter with the groundbreaking of Four Amigos – Beloved Community in Columbia City, a mixed-use affordable housing project that will provide 87 homes for families, along with a bilingual child development center and community space. Her work continues to shape a more equitable, inclusive Seattle. Earlier this year, Estela Ortega received the Martin Luther King Jr. Medal of Distinguished Service from King County, recognizing her lifelong dedication to uniting people across lines of race, language, and class. On October 25, Rainier Valley Historical Society proudly honored her as our 2025 History Maker at the 10th Annual Founder’s Dinner, where she was presented with a Proclamation from the City of Seattle officially declaring October 25 “Estela Ortega Day.”

Rainier Valley Heritage News is a semi-annual publication established in 1993. This newsletter serves as a rich chronicle of historical narratives and community insights, dedicated to preserving the heritage of Rainier Valley. Newsletters The Rainier Valley Heritage News is a semi-annual publication established in 1993. This newsletter serves as a rich chronicle of historical narratives and community insights, dedicated to preserving the heritage of Rainier Valley. Fall 2025 Spring 2025 Fall 2024 Spring 2024 Fall 2023 Spring 2023 Rainier Valley Roots: The School Garden Movement Fall 2022 The Dunlaps on Lake Washington Spring 2022 Fall 2021 V is for Veterans Spring 2021 Ron Chew's Unforgotten Seattle Fall 2020 Women in isolation at Rainier Beach Crittenton Home Spring 2020 Fall 2019 Spring 2019 From Wilderness to Park Fall 2018 Spring 2018 History of Mt. Baker Fall 2017 40 Years of Cuts, Shaves & Shines! Spring 2017 A Horse, A Cow, Chickens, and Turkeys, Oh My! Fall 2016 Lakewood Pioneer Family Member Honored As Hero Spring 2016 Celebrate RVHS at our annual meeting for members and friends! Fall 2015 Columbia Electric Bakery - From Spark to Flame Spring 2015 The Newspaper Project Fall 2014 Newspaper Project Spring 2014 Remembering the ‘70s Fall 2013 A Lot of Pie at Seattle Summer Streets and Rainier Valley Heritage Parade Load More

Historical society in Seattle, Washington. Our mission is to collect, preserve, exhibit, and interpret the history and heritage of the Rainier Valley. WELCOME TO RAINIER VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY Learn More Our Mission To collect, preserve, exhibit, and interpret the history and heritage of Rainier Valley and its community and to educate and promote public involvement in, and appreciation of, its history and culture. Big News! We bought a building! We're excited to announce the purchase of the historic Columbia Motor Co. Building at 3806 S Ferdinand Street in Columbia City. After more than 130 years of preserving and sharing Rainier Valley’s stories, we finally have a permanent home to grow our archives, host exhibits, and create a vibrant community space. Read More Upcoming Events See all events Weekly Office Hours Fri, Dec 05 RVHS Office Stop by the RVHS office! Learn more Holiday Open House Sat, Dec 06 3806 S Ferdinand St, Seattle, WA 98118, USA Come by for cider and photos with the Chubby & Tubby Santa sleigh! Learn more Featured Articles See more articles Our Archives Learn more about our archives Articles & Publications Photographs Newsletters Oral Histories Become a Member Help us preserve and celebrate the history of the Rainier Valley. Be a part of our advocacy for local preservation. Become a Member

Help us preserve and celebrate the history of the Rainier Valley. Be a part of our advocacy for local preservation. Support RVHS Your gift helps preserve the stories, cultures, and histories that make Rainier Valley unique. Every donation supports our archives, exhibits, programs, and the creation of Rainier Valley Heritage Hall. Thank you for your support!