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It took a lot of lobbying by the local citizenry to convince the downtown officials to build a library in Columbia City. With grants from the Andrew Carnegie foundation the city was building several libraries around Seattle and our local leaders were persuasive enough to get one built in Columbia. It opened on December 30, 1915. The total cost including furniture and fixtures was $35,000.  We think the design chosen for our Columbia Library was the best of any of them. Rainier Avenue, at that time a two-lane, wood planked street was to the right of the streetcar tracks in the above photo. Later Rainier Avenue was graded, the streetcar tracks were moved to the right and Two lanes of brick paving were put in on either side of the tracks. Old timers tell about the horse that died when it fell into the ravine and they concluded there was no easy way to get it out. The local people were starting to fill the ravine with garbage so they decided to leave the horse where it was. The garbage soon filled the ravine and it became the Columbia Park that we enjoy today and was recently the site of the Rainier Valley Heritage Festival. A creek came down a deep ravine behind the library, through a small lake named Lake Austin, and into Wetmore Slough which extended north along Rainier Avenue as far as Franklin High School. It also went east along Genesee Street to 47th Avenue and north along 43rd to Lake Washington. This p[art of the slough is now known as Genesee Park. Salmon used to come up the creek behind the library to spawn. There was a lot of talk about the town of Columbia becoming a lake port by dredging Wetmore Slough, but when the locks were built in 1917, Lake Washington was lowered 9feet and the slough dried up. The park was threatened in the ‘50s when a commercial developer wanted to build on the park. The Pioneers of Columbia City, the predecessor to the Rainier Valley Historical Society, led by local attorney Phil Weiss, got involved and convinced the city it should remain a park.  A lawsuit between the city and the developers worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and ended with a victory for the park. Days Gone By South District Journal 9/16/98 By Buzz Anderson

This photo was taken in 1912. The location was the southeast corner of Rainier and Alaska Street in Columbia City, where the Post Office is situated today. Rainier Avenue as well as Alaska Street was raised to accommodate the streetcar tracks which had originally been built on a trestle across the Wetmore Slough. The fill for Rainier And Alaska created a deep ravine on most of the block, similar in elevation to the Rainier play field located on the north side of Alaska Street. The Valley Fuel Company coal bunker was situated in the ravine with a spur off the streetcar tracks on Rainier Avenue which allowed coal cars to be pushed over the top of the bunkers. Then gravity could feed the coal into the bunkers and into the wagons and trucks on the lower level. This photo shows the Valley Fuel Co.’s coal bunkers being raised to a higher level to match the tracks after a Rainier Avenue regrade. As the demand for the coal diminished the bunkers were adapted to handling sand, gravel and other building materials. The ravine where the bunker had been located was used as a garbage fill starting in the 40’s. When that was filled the city continued the garbage fill east from the play field up to 47th Avenue and north across Genesee to the lake where Sayres Hydroplane Pits are today. This area was known as Wetmore Slough and also included the area north along Rainier as far north as the junction with Empire Way, now  Martin Luther King Way. When Lake Washington was lowered nine feet to build the locks at Ballard in 1917 the Slough dried up. The smell from the garbage fill permeated the neighbor and made living nearby almost unbearable on warm summer evenings. They weren’t as quick to cover it with dirt as they do today. The fill was completed in 1964 and is now Genesee Park. Days Gone By South District Journal 9/2/1998 By Buzz Anderson The Rainier Valley Historical Society publishes a quarterly newsletter. Membership dues are $30.00 annually. Our office and Museum are located in the Rainier Valley Cultural Center at 3515 S Alaska, just west of Rainier Ave S. We can be contacted at 206 722 2838. Our mailing address is P.O. Box 18143, Seattle, WA 98118.

This photo was taken about 1905 looking North along Rainier Avenue from Hudson Street. The building on the left housed the equipment for the volunteer fire department that included a water pump cart and a hose reel cart. The adjoining building with the copula roof is the town hall, one of Columbia City’s first buildings. It was built in 1891 just south of Hudson Street and then moved to this sight just north of Hudson Street. The building costs were covered by private subscriptions from the pioneers that bought the first lots in Columbia.  This is where they set up their town government. They incorporated the town in 1893, electing a Mayor, Marshall and the Town Council. One of their first ordinances banned saloons in the town. The first school classes met in this town hall while Columbia School was being built. The children moved into the first floor of the school while the second floor was still under construction in 1892. A Sunday School was also started in the town hall and almost all the residents participated. The town of Columbia was annexed by Seattle in 1907 and the Town Hall building then had other uses including the Seattle Public Library in 1911 and the City Light office in the‘20s. The cement building currently on the site was built for the Seattle police department, precinct 5, in the ‘30's. When the precinct relocated to have more space, it became a public health facility. That original town hall building still exists today as a duplex, one block west on the south side of Hudson street. It now has a conventional shaped roof. The next building on the left was a pool room and barbershop that exists today as Angies Tavern. On the right of Rainier Avenue is Guy Dickie’s “Columbia Hardware and Tinsmith Shop”, and “McKenzie’s Plumbing.” Days Gone By South District Journal 8/26/1998 By Buzz Anderson

The Tower at the ‘Columbia School, seen here in 1906, was the original home of the bell that has since been kept in storage at Orca at Columbia Elementary School.  The inset in the photograph is an illustration of the bell from the 1897 Sears Roebuck & Co. Catalog. The price was $9.00. The bell from the old Columbia School bell tower has been rescued from obscurity. The 175 pound, 22” diameter bell called the local students to classes from 1893 to 1922. Members of our predecessor organization, the Pioneers of Columbia City, discovered the bell in 1949 in storage at the second Columbia School, now Orca Alternative School. It had been in storage at the school for 27 years. They negotiated with the Seattle School Superintendent at that time, Samuel Fleming, about ownership of the bell. His recommendation was that the School District should retain title to the bell and, quoting the letter from Mr. Fleming, “is very willing that it should be loaned to the Columbia Pioneers for such exhibition as they may care to make of it.” The Pioneers and students at the school raised $175.00 and donated the money to pay for a display cabinet for the Bell in the school hall where it remained until this year. Buzz Anderson, president of the Rainier Valley Historical Society, while putting on a slide show for the third grade students, discovered the bell in the display cabinet had been covered by a blanket and was not visible as intended. Buzz asked and received permission from the school principal, Mr. Ben Wright, for the Society to take possession of the bell under terms of the original agreement. The sound of the bell was heard for the first time since the seventies when it was loaded on a truck and entered in the annual August Heritage Festival Parade through Columbia City.  We will continue the tradition and enter it in all the future Parades.The bell is now mounted on a rack, next to our display cases at our office in the Rainier Valley Cultural Center. Every April the bell will signal the start of the annual meeting of the Rainier Valley Historical Society, formally the Pioneers of Columbia City. We will be holding our 110th annual meeting this year as we have done since 1891. Days Gone By South District Journal 8/12/1998 By Buzz Anderson

Nineteen ninety-six marked an important milestone for one of the area’s oldest churches. Bethlehem Lutheran Church celebrated its 90th year. In reviewing the history of the church, major themes and service stood out. Faith strengthened this congregation causing them to persevere in their desire to build the new church at 3818 S Angeline Street. The congregation has served this community in many ways throughout their history in Columbia City. The German Evangelical Bethlehem Church opened in 1906, with its first services held in a small white church on the corner of 39th Avenue S. and Angeline Street. In 1913 Pastor Paul A. Weiss arrived, serving until 1920. During Pastor Weiss’ years, the name was changed to the German “:Evangelisch Lutherische Bethlehem’s  Germeinde zu Seattle, Washington.” During this period of time the congregation added two English services per month. Later, in 1923, under the leadership of Pastor H. Mau, the congregation agreed to use the English language, while holding one German service. Over the next 20 years the congregation grew in many ways. They had three different pastors and added The Ladies Aid and the Dorcas Sewing group in supporting mission work on Papua, New Guinea. The growth in the 1940s caused regular traffic jams before and after services. The need for a new, larger church building was evident. Sunday school classes were held in every available space. Pastor L. Myron Lindblom led the congregation from 1944 through 1961, years filled with faith, hope for the future, hard work and dedication to the community. A new church is built. The three lots west of the parsonage came up for auction at a tax sale. Pastor Lindblom and a local Attorney bid $346 due on the taxes. The auctioneer told the crowd the property was for church purposes and no one bid against them. Architect W.G. Brust drew up plans from a drawing made by Pastor Lindblom. The 90-member congregation planned to construct the basement, using the basement for all services while raising funds to finish the rest of the building. They had just $4500 in the building fund and a $5000 loan from a couple who attended a church in Puyallup. The ground breaking for the new building took place on an overcast day, February 8th, 1948. Reverend Lindblom, in a 1949 interview, explained why the congregation changed their plans: “Faith did it! We knew that by faith we could go ahead—that funds and materials and labor would come to us.” The funds, materials and labor certainly did come in. The congregation applied to the Lutheran Brotherhood in Minneapolis for a loan of $16,000 toward the building of the church. When the lower half was near completion, the congregation went back to the Lutheran Brotherhood for another $25,000 to build the interior of the church. This time the Brotherhood sent their President and other officials to Columbia City to meet with Pastor Lindblom and the members of the congregation.  A letter written in 1996 by Pastor Lindblom states “The head of the loan department was dead set against any further loans. Our men braced them with the question where is your faith?” In the end the president of L.B spoke and said, “I believe in these people1 Let’s give them the loan.” So the church was completed at less than $80.000 and 20,000 hours of volunteer labor. The new building was dedicated December 4, 1949. In 1954 a new parsonage was built at 4509 S Ferdinand. With the old parsonage providing additional Sunday school space until it was purchased by a member and moved to 43rd Ave S. The church bought two houses west of the church which were torn down in order to build the Education-Chapel-Office building, dedicated November, 1958. The 1960’s brought Pastor Morris V. Dalton, his wife, Floy and their four children to the church. During the spring of 1966 Mrs. Dalton led a group of about 25 women in a crafts class. This group made the stained glass windows out of broken glass bottles and colored glass. The church responded to community needs, holding community meetings in their classrooms, senior citizen’s daily meals in their fellowship hall and the use of other classrooms for office space for nonprofit organizations. A community food bank opened and the Harriat Hessler Memorial Piano teaching program was started. The programs continued under the leadership of Pastor Braafladt and Pastor Coffman. Current Pastor, Rev. Joe; F. Ingebritson is also committed to serving the neighborhood. Thanks to Doris Harshbarger and Pastor Joel Ingebritson for sharing their church’s history with the Rainier Valley Historical Society Days Gone By South District Journal 12/23/1996 By Buzz Anderson

Rainier Valley has seen a lot of traffic revision these last few weeks.  We have many new traffic circles, sidewalks and curbs, thanks to the Seattle Engineering Department. It’s only fitting since the valley is a natural place for a transportation system to be located. Back in the early days, streetcars ran along Rainier Avenue. In 1889, J.K. Edmiston began laying tracks for the Rainier Avenue Electric Railway.  The steep grade of Washington Street required a counterbalance of heavily laden flat cars traveling in a tunnel on tracks beneath the street.  The cars pulled a cable that was gripped by streetcars ascending and descending the hill.  A pneumatic cylinder cushioned the cars at the bottom of the hill.  Tracks traveling down a private right-of-way on Rainier Avenue were laid on trestles and filled, due to the swampy ground. Despite the challenging ground conditions, the railway quickly was built.  It began to serve the community in 1891 with a car leaving Railroad Avenue every 45 minutes.  The tracks ran to 14th Avenue, then traveled southwest along what is now Rainier Avenue South.  Service was initially provided to the edge of the Dunlap property and extended to Rainier Beach in 1891 or 1892. Power for the line was purchased from Union Truck Lines, but the railway company also built its own generating plant, with supplemental power coming from Columbia Mill.  The building of the railway brought many folks out to explore the timberland that was Rainier Valley. Lots for sale Edmiston, also a principal landowner in the area, began to plan Columbia City in 1890 with Percy Rochester and a third man.  Forty acres were logged and cleared between 37th Avenue and 42nd Avenue on the east and west, and Hudson and Alaska Streets on the south and north.  The sale of lots in Columbia City began on April 4, 1891, just four months after the opening of the railway.  Lots sold for $300.  Payments were $10 down and $1 per week for 300 weeks.  The larger lots sold for $750 and required $1.50 per week.  There was no interest charged.  If a land-buyer died before completing his contract payments, his obligations were canceled. The streetcars sported banners advertising the lots for sale, inviting folks to come out and take a look.  Passengers traveling to Columbia City on the railway paid 5 cents to ride from Seattle to Columbia City.  Those going all the way to Rainier Beach paid an additional 5 cents. Residents of Columbia City and visitors from Seattle could connect at Rainier Beach, which joined the railway with the steamer City of Columbia to Bryn Mawr and Renton.  The steamer fare to Renton was 10 cents.  When they arrived at Renton, passengers had to walk 1 ½ miles from the boat landing to the town. A person could pay 25 cents at First Avenue and Washington Street and enjoy a two-hour ride through Rainier Valley, with picturesque water and mountain views. Numerous outdoor opportunities existed along the line. One could stop for boating, fishing or camping at the lakeside, and picnic grounds with free water and wood were available at Rainier Beach. By 1906, the railway boasted of 23 passenger cars as well as freight cars and locomotives. Different Owners Over the years, different men held an interest in the railway company. Frank Osgood purchased it in 1895, paying$14,300 at an auction. He renamed it the Seattle & Rainier Beach Railway. He managed the company profitably for several years, raising its value to $90,000. He sold his interest in the railway to W.R. Crawford in 1907. The railway’s name was changed to Seattle, Renton & Southern Railway. In 1934, a franchise was obtained from Seattle.  The line ran down Fourth Avenue in 1909 and, in 1910, added the first of its Moran steel cars, which could reach 50 miles per hour. The following year was eventful for the company.  Crawford introduced zone fares and was met by passengers who refused to pay or to leave the cars.  He backed down, but the event caused such a stir that the state formed a Public Service Commission to look into the matter. In March 1911, Seattle voters were asked to approve an $800,000 bond issue allowing the city to purchase the railway.  Crawford raised the asking price to $1.2 million, and the city decided to build its own railway. Crawford then refused to accept transfers from the Seattle Electric Co.  Passengers again had the upper hand and made him change his mind and keep accepting the transfers. The company remained in business for many years, adding service down Genesee Street.  As late as 1930, the line allowed students from Mercer Island to ride a boat named Alice – names after the skipper’s wife – to Rainier Beach, where they caught the streetcar to Franklin High School.  The railway company applied to the city for another franchise in 1934, but citizens protested, claiming that the unpaved streetcar tracks that ran between the two lanes of Rainier Avenue were a “thoroughfare of death.”  Evidently, the city had protested the unpaved tracks for 20 years, even though our records only show one fatal accident. On Feb. 10, 1937, the last car returned to the Hudson Street barns, ending 46 years of private streetcar service to Rainier Valley.  The firm was the valley’s largest employer.  Its closing, combined with the Great Depression, hurt nearly everyone in the district.  By summer of that year, however, citizens were celebrating the paving of the center of Rainier Avenue, where the tracks used to lie.  The residents of the valley pulled together and enjoyed a parade featuring Miss Seattle and the community princesses. This article was written by Mary Ann Balch, a South Seattle resident, is a member of the Rainier Valley Historical Society. Title for photo: Car #22 Car #22 at the Kenyon Street turn-around about 1904. Prior to 1900 this car ran in Port Townsend until acquired by the SR&S Ry. Then Mr. Hipkins, their master mechanic and blacksmith, rebuilt it. The sign on the car reads: “Lots $65.00 in Southeast Seattle.” Days Gone By South District Journal 10/23/1996 By Mary Ann Balch

One of Columbia’s most active and civic-minded businessmen was William W. Phalen: grocer, baseball player, and town mayor. Phalen settles in Columbia City in 1901, when he was about 40 years old. His early years prepared him well for the demands of running a business and participating in civic events. At age 21, he left his family’s farm, going to work in a grocery store. He worked in Senator Falls, N.Y., and then in New York City. Evidently, Bill spent some time traveling by railroad. His travels took him to Wentworth, S.D., where he worked for Charles H. Weiss, father of Pierre and Phil Weiss. (The Weiss family also moved to Columbia City in 1905, and they too, were active community members.) Prior to moving to Columbia City, Phalen also played professional baseball for 13 years. In 1895, he played for Mankato, Minn., team, but he also played in New York and South Dakota. He was a grocer during his off-season employment, a necessity in the early days of the game. Community Organizer When Bill came to Columbia he was full of energy, with a vision of the future. Not afraid of asserting himself, Bill organized the volunteer fire department and a baseball team, which he managed for two years. The Rainier Valley Historical Society had a photograph of the fire department, taken in 1906, which shows Pierre Weiss as part of the team. This photo may have been taken as a farewell as Columbia City was about to become annexed into Seattle and the fire department was about to be replaced by Seattle station No. 28, on Rainier Avenue and South Orcas Street. Phalen opened a grocery store, which quickly became the largest in the area. It employed several men on horseback to visit homes and solicit grocery orders. Orders were then delivered by horse-drawn carriages. The store was in the process of changing its name when its picture, which accompanies this column, was taken. The sign above the store reads Reliance General Store, while the carriages’ signs were tagged W.W. Phalen, Your Grocer. The store, at 4863 Rainier Avenue South, was a frame building with an ornate, two-story façade. Phalen had purchased the building shortly after moving here from the East. At the time of purchase, it was known as the Knights of Pythias Hall. The second-floor hall was often the site of community meetings and social gatherings. After a short time, it became known as “Phalen’s Hall.” As Phalen’s grocery business prospered, so did his standing in the community. Elected as mayor in 1905 and 1907, he put up street signs and donated land to Columbia City. It is interesting to note that he ran for mayor in 1906 but was defeated because he opposed an attempt by the Citizens Telephone Co. to obtain a 50-year franchise. He was elected in 1907, on the condition that Columbia City becomes part of Seattle. Town Celebration Phalen served his community. He was chairman of the Rainier Valley Fiesta, an annual town celebration, for its first three years, beginning in 1915. The annual Fiesta was an event to remember: There were bands, booths, parades and rides. One publication at the time estimated the attendance of the first Fiesta to be 20,000 people. Phalen is remembered not only as one on the fairest and most impartial officers ever elected in Columbia City but also as a man who loved people and joyfully celebrated life. He died on a trip to New York City to attend the World Series in 1917. South District Journal 9/25/1996 By Mary Ann Balch This column was compiled from articles printed in past issues of the Rainier Valley Historical Society newsletter. The compiler was Mary Ann Balch, a Southeast Seattle resident and a member of the society.

Residents of Rainier Valley are blessed with many beautiful parks and green spaces in which to play.  This area was important to Seattle as a recreational area at the turn of the century. The following excerpts from an essay tell a little about our sports history, giving us a feel for what life was like about 100 years ago.  The essay was written in the 1960’s by Bernie Jacobsen, after his retirement from his job as managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Before 1890 and the birth of Columbia City (with the building of the Rainier Valley, Renton and Southern Railway), there was a dirt road that wound out the valley from the small town of Seattle to the Cricket Club. “The Cricket Clubhouse stood at the edge of a green meadow at what is now the southwest corner of Rainier Avenue (South) and South Charlestown Street.  The Clubhouse was an impressive two-story, gabled-roof structure with a veranda that ran along the full length of the sides that faced south and west. “From the veranda, the club members, seated on wicker chairs, watched the play on the field and cheered the performance of bowlers and batsmen in the game whose beginnings are lost in antiquity.  There must be, somewhere in Seattle, a record of how cricket got its start here and why the whole thing was finally abandoned, leaving a really lovely clubhouse staring out through broken windows at the empty playing field grown up in buttercups and thistles.  It is known,  however,  that Seattle’s First Hill families frowned on “the goings-on” at the Cricket Club and many would not permit their daughters to attend night events and dances at the club.  Perhaps the reason for this attitude lay more in the isolation of the place and the long trip home than anything that occurred at the parties. In any event, by 1912, the club had been abandoned for some years and residents in the area grazed a few milk cows and horses on the meadow-like grounds that extended from what is now (South) Charlestown Street on the north to just beyond (South) Andover (Street) on the south and from Rainier Avenue (South) to 36th Avenue South.  The cricket grounds at that time (1912) were about 15 feet below the level of the Rainier Valley car tracks.  The supermarket, liquor store, restaurant and other buildings now on the site are on a landfill that raised the area to the level of the avenue.  (Columnist’s note:  The site is now occupied by Rainier Plaza). “It was about 1918 when Mr. Mackey, a neighbor who had a beautiful home, a barn, tool shop and workshed at 36th Avenue (South) and South Andover (Street), announced that he had a contract to tear down the old Cricket Club.  He said he would be selling the lumber from it. “This was interesting because it was the first time any of the neighbors had ever known Mr. Mackey to do any work for money.  He kept himself busy with his horses, cow, garden, large yard and workshop. “Using horses and block and tackle, he pulled down  the clubhouse rapidly.  He hired the boys of the neighborhood to pull the hand-forged old square nails from the lumber, which he sold, some to neighbors, some elsewhere.  There was a lot of tongue and groove Port Orford cedar in the wall paneling and some beautiful oak flooring.” MANY CLUB USES That is the end of Jacobsen’s discussion of the Cricket Club.  Other notes from historian Carey Summers indicate that the club also was used for baseball, football, meetings, and dances.  Boaters also used the property, as a creek ran through there from Hillman City on its way to Puget Sound. One can only speculate as to the reason for the lack of interest in the Cricket Club, but it is interesting that the Columbia City Athletic Club, formed in 1909, had baseball and basketball teams sponsored by the Columbia Congregational Church. In 1913, the land for Columbia Playfield was purchased, and the Lakewood Civic Improvement Club built their clubhouse in 1914.  This was a period when Columbia City changed and grew very rapidly, with progress the goal of the day. Jacobsen, the writer of the essay, had lived in Rainier Valley since 1912 and had served as a president of the Pioneers of Columbia City.  The Pioneers met annually from 1891, when the first lots were sold in Columbia City, until 1993, when the organization evolved into the Rainier Valley Historical Society (RVHS).  The Pioneers’ extensive collection of photos and printed material, now known as the Hall Summers Collection, was deeded to RVHS and is available for public viewing during the Society’s office hours. Benefits of membership include quarterly newsletters, volunteer opportunities, and a wonderful time at our annual meetings, held in the tradition of the Pioneers. Days Gone By South District Journal 7/24/1996 By Mary Ann Balch

Several years ago I had the pleasure of listening to a gem of history as I interviewed Ralph Nichols Jr. The history he had to tell was long, detailed and fascinating. As a community, we were lucky to have a man with such clarity of thought and memory, willing to share his experiences of growing up in the Rainier Valley while our community was still young. Most of the interview was about his father, Ralph Nichols Sr., who was one of the valley’s earliest businessmen. From this interview I would like to impart just one of many “long-forgotten gems” re-discovered: The year was 1893. The Stanford University Football Team was barnstorming the country, playing everywhere. (Barnstorming in 1893 meant getting on a train and traveling for three days before you had a decent meal.) The location of this particular game was the University of Washington campus, and they were playing on university land that now comprises downtown Seattle. The setting is the University’s first major collegiate football game. Ralph Nichols Sr. was the student manager for the university’s football team and had arranged this first time meeting with a major out of state school. Back then the student manager also played the game on the field. It was a tough game. The UW lost to Stanford 40 – 0. After the game, Stanford’s student manager came over to talk with Nichols. Stanford’s student- manager wanted him to know that, despite the loss, Nichols had proven himself well. He asked him to leave the University of Washington and play football for Stanford. He made the offer more appealing by pointing out that there might even be a job waiting tables to help pay for tuition. Ralph turned down the offer with the simple reply, he was “going to school to get an education, not to play football.” Ralph was in the first class to graduate from the university’s present location in the North end. He was involved in campus activities and school politics. Later he had the Rainier Fuel Co. on Edmunds Street in Columbia City with a branch at Rainier Beach. He was also Columbia City’s attorney. He built a steam plant for the apartment building he built on  Angeline St. and extended the pipeline to the Masonic Lodge building, The Heater Glove Co., and across Rainier Avenue to his own and two other houses. He was drafted to run for mayor of Seattle by the Seattle Star and although he didn’t want the job and didn’t campaign, he won. He hated corruption in government and when the mayor left town for a trip east, he appointed Ralph as the acting mayor. As soon as the mayor left town Ralph fired the police chief who was noted for running a corrupt department. When the mayor returned he hired him back. “What happened to the student manager from Stanford?” you ask. Well, the two of them kept in touch for years after and he invited Ralph to Washington D.C. for his inauguration as the 30th  president of the United States. His name was Herbert Hoover. Days Gone By South District Journal 1/18/1995 By Buzz Anderson

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 industrialization there after the emperor was restored in 1868. New taxation and economic policies affected the farming class very harshly. Taxes were applied to land and had to be paid in cash. In a time of inflation, rice prices were kept artificially low and in the 1880's farming families all over Japan lost their land. There was a custom of working temporarily away from home and the Japanese government extended this permission to include the island of Hawaii where there was a desperate need for workers in the sugar cane fields. The field work was brutally hard but wages in Hawaii were about six times higher than in Japan. When the first 600 work permits became available in 1885, over 28,000 people applied. The Japanese government and the emigrants themselves viewed this time abroad as temporary. The workers were generally from farming communities and, because of the eight years of schooling provided in Meiji Japan, they were literate and, although poor, not destitute. They were expected to uphold the honor of their country abroad and to return to Japan when they were financially able to purchase a good position there. In fact, over 55 percent of the emigrants to Hawaii prior to 1924 did return to Japan. During Mr. Kubota's early years, the immigration activity between Japan, Hawaii and the United States was complex and tumultuous. In 1882 the United States Congress had stopped Chinese immigration in response to anti-Chinese hysteria, but the country still had an ever increasing need for workers in the mines, the railroads, the sawmills, and the canneries. Japan was very conscious of the anti-Chinese activities in America and consistently sought to control emigration so as to avoid confrontation and international embarrassment. In 1886 Japan prohibited contract workers from immigrating to America; the government had a horror of the world seeing destitute Japanese nationals homeless on the streets of America. Emigrants were screened for disease in both Japan and America, had to have a certain amount of money in hand, and could not be destitute. In 1889 all males in Japan became subject to military conscription, however students and emigrants were excepted from this obligation. In 1900 Hawaii was annexed by the United States and all Japanese workers with valid passports to Hawaii could enter the United States legally. Wages in the states were double those in Hawaii in 1900, and by 1904 over half of the Japanese immigrating to Hawaii actually traveled immediately to the United States. On the mainland, anti-Japanese activity began to build, especially in California. The combination of increased Japanese immigration via Hawaii and increasing anti-Japanese activity in the United States led to the 1908 "Gentleman's Agreement" which limited Japanese immigration to students, tourists, diplomats and the close family relatives of Japanese already in the United States. Fujitaro Kubota’s Early Years In February of 1879, Fujitaro Kubota was born in Kochi prefecture on the island of Shikoku. The smallest of the four big islands, Shikoku faces the gentle Inland Sea on one side and the rough Pacific on the other. Mr. Kubota grew up facing the Pacific Ocean, separated from the rest of Japan by a chain of mountains, far from the centers of power and surrounded by the beauty of mountains and sea. The people of Kochi are sometimes called the "Texans of Japan" because of their energy, vigor, outspokenness and independence. Fujitaro’s family were rice farmers and they were in comfortable circumstances. Mr. Kubota attended an agricultural school and, as the first-born son, was expected to take over his father's position as head person in their village. He was 26 years old, married and with two daughters when he went to Hawaii in 1907. One story says that he did not like to eat rice economically extended with potatoes, another says that he did not enjoy settling the marriage disputes, debts and other village conflicts brought to him as his father's son. Kubota family, probably in Japan, 1920. Courtesy Densho Kubota Garden Foundation Collection. To America He left for San Francisco soon after landing in Hawaii and his timing was impeccable. In March of that year, President Teddy Roosevelt signed an Executive Order which prohibited Japanese from coming to the mainland from Hawaii. Mr. Kubota landed in San Francisco and traveled up the coast. This was unusual since most Japanese immigrants stayed in California where agricultural work was close at hand. In1909, there were nearly 3,000 Japanese working in the sawmills in Washington State, one of them was Fujitaro Kubota. He worked at Selleck, near Black Diamond and was able to bring Mrs. Kubota to join him, family members being allowed to immigrate by the 1908 "Gentlemen's Agreement." About 1913, Mr. Kubota left Selleck and moved to Seattle where he operated and managed hotels and apartment buildings in Pioneer Square, what is now the International District, and Yesler Hill. His family grew to include two sons and two daughters, and he took the whole family back to Japan to visit. His business affairs prospered until the depression after the First World War when he lost his buildings with the exception of an apartment building which was also his home. Kubota family operated this rooming house in the Chinatown International District, Seattle, 1913-1920. Courtesy Washington State Archives. The Northwest economy was booming during the first years after Mr. Kubota arrived, and Seattle was growing rapidly. After the First World War, however, there was an economic depression, accompanied by an anti-labor and anti-immigrant reaction. Japanese workers were more often discriminated against, and Seattle's Anti-Japanese League agitated against competition from Japanese-owned businesses. At the same time, most labor unions excluded Japanese from membership. There were often fewer obstacles to starting a business than working for wages. In the nineteen-twenties garden maintenance was one of the usual occupations of the Japanese immigrants. Mr. Kubota had some available time and some friends in the gardening business who needed some help. He worked with them for a while, discovered that he liked the work and in 1923 founded the Kubota Gardening Company. There was some general public knowledge about Japanese gardens in the Seattle area. Josiah Conder's book Landscape in Japan had been published in 1893 and Japanese gardens were featured in the various international expositions held at the end of the century. Well established trade contact between the Northwest and Japan had created some awareness of the Japanese garden arts. The Kubota Gardening Company prospered, and he was soon doing more than cutting lawns. A Gardening Career Fujitaro Kubota was a pioneer in bringing eastern gardening ideas to the Northwest. Interviewed by Mr. lto in 1965 for the book Issei, he said: "I had not been trained as a gardener. After finishing grammar school, I went to the night class of a supplementary school where I learned only a little introductory botany. But American gardeners didn't even know about the three ingredients of fertilizers and about which plants grow in sun and which don't. I returned to Japan three times to study gardening which wasn't easy. In Kyoto I visited professional gardeners and asked many questions, but they wouldn't give me the most important part of their know-how. It was like the art of the tea ceremony and traditional dance in Japan which are taught in the rigid old family system. I knew a man in South Park - Ryotaro Nishikawa from Okayama Prefecture. His father loved gardens and so he learned about trees and plants from his father. He was particularly good at cultivating pine trees and came to help me whenever he had time. I would say he was my only gardening teacher, and no one else. Dozens of time I got stuck and was in trouble. Then I went into the woods and prayed to the gods for help. " Mr. Kubota's gardening style was distinctive, featuring stone and a few carefully selected plants. He designed with mature plants so that a new garden would look complete immediately and his work soon became appreciated in upscale neighborhoods. Soon he had seven or eight maintenance crews and one landscape crew working for him. Still living on Alder Street, he had a lot where he heeled in his plants and stored the equipment but he started looking around for a bigger piece of land where he could show what he could do. Property on Renton Avenue In 1927 a realtor brought him out to Rainier Beach to look at five acres of logged off swamp along Renton Avenue South. His youngest son Tom recalls that the land was very brushy and hard to walk through but that after they managed to push in a little way, his dad heard water and got very excited. The five-acre piece had some changes in elevation, several springs and an all-season creek. Tom says, "He wanted it really bad..." It took all the family's resources including the kid's savings to make the down payment and the land was purchased in the name of a friend since Mr.Kubota could not legally hold land. Rainier Beach had been annexed to Seattle in 1907 but was considered to be far out in the country and Renton Avenue was only paved for one lane. The family had a caretaker live on the property and commuted out from the International District to work on the garden. Their first project was to drain the swamp. A rockery was placed along Renton Avenue, roads were made and ponds were dug out along the creek. The Great Depression was slow coming to the Pacific Northwest and the Kubota Gardening Company continued to prosper through 1931 but then, according to Tom Kubota, everything stopped. During the depression when "We had time but no money," Tom recalls that they worked building the Japanese Garden. The pond was dug out with wheelbarrows and with horses dragging a Fresno Scraper. The excavated soil created the hill and the stones were glacial erratics recovered from construction sites and farmer's fields. After 1936, business began to pick up again and in 1940 the family moved to the garden to live. By this time Mr. Kubota had acquired additional land adjacent to the original five acres, more than doubling the property. Much of the area of the Garden was already planted with nursery stock for later sale to landscaping customers. He would continue to acquire property as he could afford it, having a strong feeling that "You need to have 20 acres to make something really good." It was always a financial stretch. Tom describes his dad as someone who “Just went out and did what he wanted to do, and then we all suffered." The Internment at Minidoka In 1940 there were about 7,000 people of Japanese ancestry in Seattle, about two thirds were citizens, born in America. Discriminated against in housing and employment, most lived in the central city and had little contact with the rest of the city of 368,000 people. After December 7, 1941, there were few voices raised in support of the Japanese Americans. On March 21, 1942, notices were posted in Seattle directing that all persons of Japanese ancestry were to report the following week for evacuation. Mr. and Mrs. Kubota and their daughter May, their son Tak and his family, were interned in Idaho at Camp Minidoka until the fall of 1945. Near Hunt, Minidoka was located on 33,500 acres of desert land reclaimed by the government when homesteaders abandoned it. Temperatures ranged from a minus 20 degrees in winter to 115 degrees in summer. It was an instant city of over 9,000 people uprooted from their homes, deprived of their civil rights, and never charged with any crime. Years later, in 1980, the federal Civil Liberties Commission would declare that the internment of 110,000 people nationally was caused by "racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and the failure of political leadership." Mr. Kubota served as representative of Block 26 at Minidoka and busied himself with landscaping, trying to make the area more comfortable by planting trees to provide shade. He was also active in the Variety Show Club that offered regular entertainment in the camp. Before the war Mr. Kubota had been an enthusiastic actor in the local Japanese theater, playing women's roles in the old time plays. He loved to entertain and Tom recalls that, "He would stand up at a gathering and would make people laugh or cry too". Kubota Family in Minidoka, 1943. Courtesy Densho Kubota Garden Foundation Collection. The Return to Seattle Tom Kubota served in the army in the Military Intelligence Unit and was given a furlough to help his family move from the camp. Minidoka was one of the last camps to close and word had reached Idaho of the rough treatment other returning internees had experienced. There was a real concern about whether it was safe to return to Seattle. Tom traveled to Seattle, talked with old customers and friends and returned to Minidoka to encourage his family to return to Seattle which they did. Many interned Japanese never returned to their home cities, rather moving away from the coast to mid-west and eastern cities. The family had renters staying in the house during the years of internment, but the garden had been untouched for four years. Grass had grown so high that the roads were unrecognizable, the carefully pruned trees had gone wild, and the ponds were full of silt and debris. Mr. Kubota was now sixty-six years old and he faced back taxes and assessments plus the interest incurred during the internment. Tom recalls spending three weeks cutting the grass around the house with a scythe. At that time the family decided that they would concentrate upon design and garden construction rather than garden maintenance. They began extensive plantings of nursery plants that were then grown to maturity for use on their jobs. Mr. Kubota had brought seed for Japanese black and red pines from Japan before the war. During the internment the seedlings had grown from one to over six feet and they were replanted all over the garden. These trained pines were the signature plant of the Kubota Gardening Company. Their old customers called and there was high demand for their work. Even before the war the Kubota firm had worked at Seattle University and they continued to landscape the fifty-two-acre campus during the fifties and sixties. Their expertise in moving large trees allowed them to bring a note of maturity to essentially a young campus. Although much changed due to the development of new buildings, the SU campus remains as a prime example of their public work. Another is the Japanese Garden at the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, created in 1960. May Kubota, Kumae Kubota, unidentified woman, and Fujitaro Kubota in the Garden, 1946. Courtesy Densho Kubota Garden Foundation Collection. In the decades following the war the political climate for the JapaneseAmericans began to improve. In 1952 the McCarran-Walter Act allowed the Issei to become U.S. Citizens and in 1966 Washington State overturned the last Alien Land Law. The Seattle Japanese American community had traditionally been leaders within the national community. The Japanese American Citizens’ League was established in 1929, and had its first national convention in Seattle in 1930. Minidoka was the only internment camp which produced a yearbook, the Minidoka Interlude and in the mid '60s the community sponsored the 1016page book Issei, documenting the life experiences of these then very elderly people. Seattle Nisei and Sansei were leaders in the Redress Movement which led to national apologies in 1988 and payments to surviving internees. Fujitaro Kubota's Certificate of Naturalization, 1955. Courtesy Densho Kubota Garden Foundation Collection. Fujitaro Kubota in a red pine tree in the Garden, 1965. Courtesy Densho Kubota Garden Foundation Collection. The garden in Rainier Beach was restored by the end of the forties and the family continued to develop it as time and money allowed. Mr. Kubota's last major project was the creation of the Mountainside in 1962, the year of the Seattle World's Fair. This garden is intended to give the visitor a trip into the mountains. Mr. Kubota had saved special stones and plants for years and he built a twisting path that gains 65 feet in elevation and used over 400 ton of stone to create a series of pools and waterfalls. He was then 83 years old and continued to work with his sons creating gardens across the area. In the early '70's the Moon Viewing Platform and Moon Bridge were created. Mr. Kubota was then in his nineties, and Tom comments that his dad mostly advised on this project. In 1972, when he was ninety-three, the Japanese Government awarded Fujitaro Kubota the Fifth Class Order of the Sacred Treasure, the highest such award then given in the Pacific Northwest. It was given in recognition of his "achievement in his adopted country, for introducing and building respect for Japanese Gardening and culture there." Mr. Kubota died in 1973 leaving a legacy of many fine private and public gardens, his own Kubota Garden and his family. A Public Garden The Kubota family continued the business but by the late '70’s it became apparent that sustaining the twenty-acre garden was unrealistic. Many proposals were developed to build residential housing on the property and this generated much concern among those who knew that a unique garden was likely to be lost. Mr. Kubota had an expansive nature; he loved to show people around the garden and had always made the garden available to the public. The Japanese- American community held many prefecture parties at the garden, school children in the neighborhood came for field trips and a manicured picnic lawn was kept for the neighbors to use for picnics. During Mr. Kubota’s life time, there had been talks with the city about acquiring the garden as a public garden but no agreement was ever achieved. In an effort to protect the garden, in 1981 the four-and-a-half-acre core garden was declared to be a Historical Landmark of the City of Seattle. Various proposals for residential development were rejected, however a proposal to build 268 units was given approval by Seattle's building department. Landscape designers, gardeners, neighbors, artists, Japanese-Americans, and old clients across the city encouraged the city to acquire the garden. City Councilwoman Jeanette Williams led the effort and facilitated the purchase. In 1987 the City of Seattle acquired the twenty-acre garden as a public park. In 1989 the Kubota Garden Foundation was established as a non-profit, friend’s organization, to “support, enhance, and perpetuate the Kubota Garden within the spirit and vision of Fujitaro Kubota.” Photo: Courtesy of theKubota Garden Foundation. Tom Kubota was the primary source for this article which I prepared for a lecture series “Japanese Elements in Pacific Northwest Garden Design” held at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in the fall of 1996. Tom died in 2004 but I have retained his voice here as a happy memory of his, as always, generous and gracious support. Mary Anne Parmeter August 15, 2010 Kubota Garden Foundation Board Member https://www.kubotagarden.org/

“Dear Sir, In donating the Remington electric typewriter to us, you have added a spoke to the wheel of justice.” --Jean French, Director, Rainier Community Action Center On December 10, 1973, in the middle of Columbia City’s holiday shopping season, Ellen Burris’s jewelry store was robbed. Five men, two of them armed, entered the store at closing time, told Burris and a customer to lie on the floor, and proceeded to fill a pillowcase with watches and rings from the store’s display cases. Then they took the cash drawer out of the register and grabbed the customer’s purse; their total haul was $12,000. Burris had already lost $10,000 in two earlier robberies that year. This was the last straw—a month later she closed her doors for good, after 26 years in business. David Suffia, writing for the Seattle Times, placed the closing of Rainier Jewelers in the context of a neighborhood “awash with crime and fear," where elderly people were “afraid to walk the streets, even in daylight," and according to the local bank manager, “the hoods are driving the merchants out.” Some might have questioned this histrionic characterization of the neighborhood, but no one could deny that crime was up: in 1963 there had been two robberies in Columbia City; in 1973 there were 53. Several factors contributed to the increase in crime: the “Boeing Bust: of 1969-71 had hit South Seattle hard, and the resulting exodus of white middle class residents had weakened the once-stable community. Some people worried that the South End’s concentration of low income housing had brought more poor- and possibly desperate- people into the neighborhood. And certainly ill-planned low income housing developments such as Greenwood Gardens near Holy Park had become havens for criminals. At the same time, a decline in police manpower had left local residents and businesses to fend for themselves—and they were trying. Rainier Jewelers had a button behind the counter that sounded an alarm at Grayson and Brown Hardware next door, and according to the Times article, “police recently responded to a robbery in progress and found merchants armed with sticks and baseball bats waiting for robbers to emerge from a store.” But the merchants knew baseball bats weren’t the answer to their crime problem. Two weeks after the robbery at Rainier Jewelers, the Executive Board of the Rainier Chamber of Commerce met to discuss the matter, and in particular to identify strategies for getting more help from the City. Thus began a long-term, multi-pronged anti-crime campaign headed up by local business leaders determined to keep their community—and their customer base—from slipping away. It seems worth pointing out that these were not disenfranchised members of the community who needed to learn how to access the levers of power. These were established citizens who, in the words of social scientist William Lyons, “had long records of accomplishment and reputation in the community and downtown as serious and responsible civic leaders in the Rainier Valley. It was this long-term commitment to civic responsibility that constituted a form of social capital.” Social capital, Lyons explains, "is a form of stored reciprocity”: a network of connections among members of a community who have lived and worked together long enough to develop mutual respect, trust, and sense of responsibility for each other’s fate. The Chamber Members who joined forces to fight crime in the early 1970s had this kind of relationship with community leaders across the Rainier Valley, and, in some cases, among decision makers in government. They also knew how to wield the tools of the business world: colorful charts to display information, Remington electrics to pound out press releases. Many businessmen got involved in the Chamber’s various anti-crime activities Sam Shoel, Lou DeFranco, James Wasson, Virgil Fox, Clay Yost, and John Flaherty, publisher of the local newspaper. But one of the most formidable figures in the fight was a woman: Jean Vel Dwyk. The granddaughter of a Dutch immigrant who worked his way across the country from New York City to the Rainier Valley, Jean Veld Dwyk had attended Whitworth Grade School and Franklin High School. She went to work for Allstate Insurance at the age of sixteen, “not giving them my true age.” By the time she left the company eleven years later, she says, “I supervised numerous departments, Because I could not be a manager due to the personnel code, which required all managers to male, I took a newly designated position, ‘supervisor of supervisors’—training the managers.” Vel Dwyk’s rapid rise at Allstate was not typical of women in this male-dominated field—most women in the insurance business (or any business, really) were stuck in low-level clerical jobs with little hopes of advancement. As president of the National Association of Insurance Women, Vel Dwyk worked to change that, both by promoting professional development opportunities for women, and –perhaps more importantly – by addressing their male bosses. “I went around and spoke directly to the heads of companies and brokerages in 33 cities in the United States to… tell them that we needed them to give us a pull up if we were going to push our women to get themselves better educated, do a better job in their position, and to be recognized for it.” Vel Dwyk’s own career served as a clear challenge to long-held assumptions—embedded in personnel codes throughout the industry—about what women were capable of. In 1959 Vel Dwyk struck out on her own as a real estate agent (changing the spelling of her name to Vel Dyke for professional purposes). She might not have heard of the notion of “social capital” but her charisma, hard work, and can-do leadership meant that she was producing and banking it at an impressive clip. “Well, as a businessperson—in real estate, it’s just a natural that you have to be outgoing. You have to communicate with people, and you have to make yourself visible and aware, and just meet as many folks as you can, and tell them what you have that they might be interested in, or how you might want to help them at some point if they care for that help, or what you might need from them.” When she joined the Rainier Businessmen’s Club, she was one of its only individual women members, Later—after the organization had become the Rainer Chamber of Commerce, she served as its first female president. The activities of the Chamber at that time reflected the members’ desire to socialize, network, promote their businesses, and improve their community. In the 1960s and ‘70s they had luncheons and dinner dances, sponsored the annual Rainier Pow Wow, elected Seafair Princesses, and worked on projects like installing a pedestrian bridge over Rainier Avenue at Franklin High School and closing Seward Park’s outer loop to automobile traffic. That last project drew a certain amount of flak. “To this day,” says Vel Dwyk, “there are a couple of people in Rainier Valley that won’t talk to me—no kidding! Because they thought that was a crime.” The Chamber also tackled thornier issues, like the concentration of low income housing in Southeast Seattle, which they felt had a negative effect on the surrounding communities, and in particular on local businesses, And they tackled the complicated, ongoing issue of crime. The Chamber had to walk a fine line when they spoke about crime in the Rainier valley—they didn’t want their complaints about, say, the slow police response to 911 calls to contribute to the public’s impression of Southeast Seattle as a crime-ridden war zone. That impression—often exaggerated in the press—was just as bad for business as the actual crime rate. Lou DeFranco’s 1974 letter to the Seattle Times reflects some of this frustration: Your recent article… concerning [a] Rainier Valley robbery is certainly erroneous and damaging to our area. Your article refers to the fact that the robbery took place at La Cantina Tavern at 8601 Eighth Avenue South which is hardly in the Rainier area. I am sure you are well aware that 8601 Eight Avenue South is in South Park and should be so indicated. Crimes that have been committed along the freeway –airport area as well as along hiway 99 South and in South Park have time and again been referred to as happening in the Rainier Valley, and as an insurance agent we are having much difficulty in keeping people insured in our area as a result of this bad publicity. We are not trying to minimize the problems that we have however, it would seem to me that you ought to correct your articles so that in the interest [of[] truthful newspaper writing you place crimes where they actually happen. Lou DeFranco's 1974 letter to the Seattle Times The battle over perceptions of crime was a minor one, though, compared to the Chamber’s mobilized effort to fight the real thing. After December 1973 Executive Board meeting, Chamber President Jean Vel Dwyk met with Mayor Wes Uhlman, requesting that more police officers be assigned to the Rainier district. After the meeting, an increasingly pointed correspondence between the two resulted in the temporary assignment of mounted police officers to the Columbia City business district. ”Frankly,” the mayor wrote at one point, “I do not understand what your organization expects from my office other than continued direction to the Seattle Police Department… to work with you in solving the problems of crime in your community. None of the powers or authorities granted to me as Mayor make it possible to simply eradicate a complex problem at the local level by executive decree.” Unsatisfied the Chamber broadened its efforts. They turned Ellen Burris’s shuttered jewelry store into the Rainier Community Action Center (RCAC), where coordinator Jean French distributed public safety information and displayed local crime statistics on large color-coded charts so the public could see the latest trends. French also organized Block Watch groups (which were credited with a sevenfold decrease in crime in one Rainier Beach neighborhood) and oversaw a revolutionary Court Watch program. The Chamber held public meetings with City Councilmembers and the Police Chief, demanding action on the crime issue. (Here again, the collective social capital of the Rainier Chamber ensured that officials would show at such meetings when they were invited.) Early on, Chamber activists had identified repeat offenders as a major source of criminal activity, and this was the focus of the most well-attended public meeting. Jean Vel Dwyk explains: We went to the police and said, “Why are you not solving our problems? You need to get these people off the streets.” And they said, “Well it’s not us, it’s the prosecutor.” And then we went to the prosecutor and said “The police say that you’re not willing to take these cases.” And the prosecutor said, “ Well, that’s because the courts [are] just letting them go anyhow, so why would we waste our time with this when the judges aren’t giving us any kind of support?” So then we went to the Juvenile Court, and they said “Well Superior Court gives us our directions,” and then we went to the Superior Court—you know, we just went all the way up the line, until one day we said, this is ridiculous, We need to get these people together—in front of the public.” So [we called] a huge meeting we got the prosecutor, the head of the judiciary, the head of the Juvenile Court, the police, everybody there. And it was a great meeting I think I moderated it, as a matter of fact. And it was a great meeting because [they[ couldn’t give us an excuse for what was going on. [When they tried], one of the others would correct that. We had studied this enough that we could say, “Well Mr. Prosecutor, didn’t you say that this happened in that case? Could you explain that what’s going on here?” We had a marvelous series of meetings, but that one big meeting was the peak, I think. Jean Vel Dwyk The RCAC’s Court Watch program was designed to look into- and hopefully influence—the sentencing patterns of the Superior Court. Sentencing debates raged in the newspapers: columns with headlines like “Who is more important, criminals or people?” reflected the public’s frustration with judicial leniency. On the other hand, Judge Donald Horowitz told the Times that “prison is not the answer to providing public safety,” and pointed out that “98 percent of all prison inmates come out of prison and ‘are worse when they come out” Horowitz believed that probation was probably more effective than prison at stopping repetition of criminal activity.” The Court Watch program provoked alarm in some quarters—a Seattle Times editorial expressed concern that “an element of vigilantism may develop”—but RCAC proceeded with its plans, assigning volunteers to attend trials and report on the outcomes of various cases. Eventually the Court Watch program included an in-depth statistical analysis of the sentencing patterns of individual judges. According to an RCAC press release, “the court records were turned over to evaluation teams after substituting code numbers for the identity of the judges and the convicted criminals.” Co-chairs Buzz Anderson and Jean Vel Dwyk “developed a rating system which they feel is highly objective,” taking into account “the actual crime committed.. the past criminal record and conditions of probation, if applicable.” Five hundred criminal cases were revied by program volunteers.” When the numbers were released two years later, Horowitz and seven over judges were deemed “unacceptable.” In judicial elections later that year, according to Rainier Community Action Center President James E. Wasson, every one of these “unacceptable” judges was defeated, and seven of the eight candidates endorsed by the Court Watch program were elected. In November 1976, James E. Wasson received a letter from the King County Superior Court. “The debate will rage among lawyers and others as to what sentencing attitudes ought to be,” Judge Jerome Johnson wrote. “Regardless of such debates, I personally believe that the efforts of your group have resulted in dramatic influences in the headling of both adult and juvenile correction matters. Many of the recommendations made by you after the long study at Juvenile Court were considered carefully and resulted in changes. The robust discussions alone in the community have been beneficial.” While the Chamber (and various offshoots such as RCAC) certainly enjoyed victories such as this, it is difficult to pinpoint the direct effect of its various efforts on the crime rate in Columbia City. Their advocacy did result in some increased patrol coverage in Rainier Valley business districts,s and they supported the Police Department efforts to get better radio equipment so officers could respond to calls faster. These were probably among the many factors that contributed to the lowering of the crime rate in Rainier Valley (at least until crack arrived in the Rainier Valley ten years later – but that’s another story!). What is clear however is that the members of the Rainier Chamber of Commerce successfully used their social capital to raise awareness about the problem among residents, merchants, and elected officials. In William Lyons’s somewhat academic language, they subscribed to “a story about [their[ community that “assumes a capacity to solve problems.” In plain English, we might say they felt responsible for their community, and empowered to act on its behalf. And collectively, they had the connections, energy, and resources to make a difference. --Mikala Woodward

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, of a deliberate plan to dump Seattle’s problems in the South End. The complaint was common, but vague; it unhelpfully pointed the finger at the city’s entire political establishment and suggested no action. As pioneering community organizer, Saul Alinsky put it, “What the organizer does is convert the plight into a problem.” Trained in Alinsky’s methods, SESCO’s community organizations sought to overcome feelings of isolation and helplessness by mobilizing people around a modest issue that was concrete, specific and realizable. In a pivotal early organizing effort, SESCO hit upon one of those little issues that was symbolic of southeast Seattle’s plight and literally concrete. Residents of the Dunlap neighborhood noticed a steadily growing pile of construction rubble behind their houses. The nuisance became intolerable when one day in February of 1976, it rained the sheet built of the mount diverted enough rainwater to flood their basements. The dumping was originally intended as a fill for the site of a future church whose congregation at the time met at a house on the same property. The pile, which stood at 17 feet and was made up of dirt, large slaves of concrete and settle support rods, contained ten times more debris than the city-issued dumping permit allowed. With the help of the SESCO organization, the first thing the neighbors did was arrange a meeting with the official from the city Building Department, which had issued the dumping permit. The official told them he would investigate, by that they should really be taking the matter up with the property owner who was ultimately responsible. Church officials said they had asked their contractor repeatedly to stop the dumping. The residents contacted the contractor, who said he had nothing to do with the landfill and that he was “not about the to be city’s fall guy on this deal.” (1) This dizzying circle of deferred responsibility is very often the point where people like that Dunlap residents give up. Alinsky observed in his book Rules for Radicals that “in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a constant and somewhat legitimate, passing of the buck.” He directed community activists to pick a specific target as responsible and “freeze” it, relentlessly holding them alone accountable. The residents of Dunlap chose the superintendent of the city Building Department, a man with the unfortunate name of Mr. Petty. Twenty-five of them made a trip to his office and presented for his signature a document stating that the debris would be removed within a month. He demurred, stating that “any action on the matter would have to come about through court proceedings.” It looks like someone erred, “he told the Southeast District Journal, which had been called there for the occasion, and speculated that his department not intervening to stop the dumping “might have been an honest mistake.”(2) The Building Department’s idea of action was to issue a succession of stop work orders, which went ignored since nobody would admit to dumping at the site. Faced with continuing pressure for his department to clean up the site, Petty protested, “We’re supposed to go through the proper channels. We’ll only take it out if there are no other choices. It’s the responsibility of the property owner.” (3) In delivering what was no doubt his department’s boilerplate evasion, the superintendent inadvertently spelled out the newly minted neighborhood activist’s end game – to make it clear that there would be no choice Petty could stomach but to clean up the site. On Wednesday, April 28th, 1976, Residents and organizers loaded a pickup truck at the dump site and made a trip north to City Hall. They unloaded their cargo—a concrete slab which was estimated to weigh three tons and twisted 20 foot- long steel support rod—at the entrance to the Building Department’s office and labeled them with the specification of the fill material allowed by the city permit “8 inch piece of dirt.” Though Petty was still out to lunch when the activists arrived (until 2:15 p.m., the Seattle Times noted)., two of his representatives read a statement recounting the city’s efforts to address the complaints. One city employee noted down the names of the activists “in case there is some liability for removing the material,” he said. (4) Before they left, the Dunlap residents handed out a press release warning that, until the city cleaned up the dump, they would return with more of its contents. The simmering conviction that the city was using their community as a place to hide Seattle’s problems became real in the chunks of concrete, and now, with the help of SESCO, the community was rubbing the political establishment’s nose in the mess they refused to acknowledge. City Hall had become the dumping ground. Petty and other officials involved with the dumping issue took comfort that they were following the correct process, regardless of the result. Convinced that they had acted correctly, they were able to address the residents from a professional distance. The residents of Dunlap, who lived with the growing landfill in their backyards, were only concerned with results, which they intended to get. As recounted in SESCO’s newsletter, “The residents visited Mr. Betty at this home. There he refused to talk with they, so they visited his neighbors to tell them how he ran his department.” (5) Rodney Herold, who was SESCO’s director at the time, described the chain of events that led to the visit of the superintendent’s home as the “principle of escalation.” “People are reticent to get involved and do things,” he said, “So first they write a letter and nothing happens and they get frustrated, so they make a call. If nothing happens then, they go to the person’s workplace. And if that doesn’t work, we certainly went to people’s homes a couple of times.” (6) The principle of escalation, fed by intransigence and frustration is the motor of community organizing. It turns detached authorities into personal targets and anonymous citizens into committed activists. Someone must have told the mayor what SESCO was up to because, a few days later, one of the Dunlap residents received a call from his office conceding that the city would take care of the problem. The next week Mayor Uhlman, who was making a bid for governor, personally visited Dunlap to assure the residents the debris would be removed at the expense of the city and the contractor. SESCO organizers went on to build “action groups” around a number of other issues with names like Concerned Residents of Holly Park, Georgetown Community Against the Animal Shelton, and the Bolmor/Jacobus Committee. From these issue-specific groups, SESCO built a coalition of community groups made up of everyday residents who were ready to tackle issues that affected the entire Rainier Valley, such as housing segregation and real estate redlining. Seattle Post Intelligencer, Everybody Dumps: Problem of Fill,” 3/24/76 South District Journal, “City Action South in Landfill Conflict,” 3/31/76 South District Journal, “Residents Rock City Hall,” 5/3/76 Seattle Times, “Protestors Leave Big Calling Card,” 4/29/76 SESCO Staff Reports and the Northwest Institute Report, Volume 1976, No.6 In person interview, 11/17/09 Read more stories from this project below: Lessons In Civic Activism: Greenwood Gardens A Concrete Problem: SESCO and the Principle of Escalation Schoolyard Standoffs: The Tale of Whitworth Elementary How to Build a Bridge The Rainier Chamber’s Crime Fighting Spree: Harnessing Social Capital “Everybody In” packs it in