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When our Food Stories cookbook was being written we compiled not just recipes but recorded oral histories from people and these oral histories are recorded. So today, we are focusing on Dora Abney, her red velvet cake recipe, and what Juneteenth meant to her. You may be asking yourself, what is Juneteenth? Juneteenth is the celebration and commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War. But the proclamation didn’t reach many slaves until much later. Union soldiers often delivered the news as they moved through the South.  It wasn’t until June 19, 1865, two months after the Civil War ended, that slaves in Texas learned that they were free. Formerly enslaved people  and their descendants continued to celebrate the anniversary of their freedom every year on June 19th, which came to be known as “Juneteenth.” As African Americans migrated to other parts of the country, they took the holiday with them. Juneteenth was first celebrated in Seattle in 1890. “Red foods represented the blood that was shed during slavery – red pop, red velvet cake. Watermelon. And chicken barbecue, barbecued ribs. The blood was really flowing! Dora Abney in 2003 discussing why Red food is served at Juneteenth celebrations, Rainier Valley Food Stories Cookbook Below is an excerpt of Dora Abney’s oral history. This oral history was conducted in 2003 for Rainier Valley Historical Society’s Food Stories Cookbook. Dora Abney in 2003 was the Director of Twinks Early Childhood Education Center and Preschool in Columbia City. She is originally from Marshall, Texas, where her family celebrated Juneteenth. She moved to Seattle in the early 1960s and has lived in the Rainier Valley for more than 30 years. Here she shares her memories of Juneteenth and explains the importance of the holiday for African Americans -- and others – today. Everything was fresh because in June it’s at the end of the harvest for the South. So we would have corn on the cob – everything was fresh, fresh everything – fresh chicken out of the yard, fresh chicken off the farm, barbecue ribs. What the women made was cake and pie. And the rest of it the mens did. They got a pig in the ground, cook it all night. Then they’d put on a fire and have the ribs and stuff be on bars hanging over the fire, not like what they do now, with a grill. They just hang it. It would cook, they’d roll it over. You don’t hardly see it anymore. The men would do the whole work!” What I can remember about Juneteenth is mostly my dad. I just remember how he used to say, “Juneteenth, that’s a big thing for us,” and by being born in the South, I kinda understood what he was saying. I saw what was going on, but didn’t really understand why. Some people say it’s like the Fourth of July, but this particular day, it was more exciting for my father. Now I recognize why, because that was the day they considered they got their freedom. It was his dad’s dad’s dad – it was passed down. They understood what it meant, and why that day was so meaningful. I got the idea that it was for freedom, but the history behind it was really not told, because it’s a sad situation, what had really happened. But he would always go out and shop like it was Christmas, and he would buy food, picnic stuff.  Whether it fell on a Sunday or Monday, it was a holiday to us. Everybody in the neighborhood, everybody in the city took off. The whole city was shut down. And we would picnic away. It was hot. My father, he would always sing, and he would play ball, and he was just excited. All the mens, they played ball. We packed up and we went to the baseball field. We would just celebrate. The men and the women would just dance. The kids would look, ‘cause you know, we didn’t know. As I got older it was more explained to me. So now, I’m trying to feed that little knowledge that I know to the other children – not only just black, everyone – to understand that – it’s freedom. When we came to Washington State it kind of faded out of the family, people didn’t celebrate it. They said, “What do you mean, Juneteenth? We don’t celebrate that.” So I figured I’d let it slide. Then about four years ago, when I started at the daycare center, I brought it up again. I said, “We need to celebrate Juneteenth. The kids don’t know what it’s about.” So in 2000 we had a Juneteenth celebration at Twinks, where we blocked off the street, we sold barbecue, and the kids played. It was exciting. I said “Juneteenth,” and then to me, everybody blossomed. All of a sudden everybody did know about it: “Yeah, I heard about that, what is it about?” So we started digging up information so we could put it out, so people understand what it is. During her oral history, Dora Abney gave us her recipe for red velvet cake. RED VELVET CAKE with Cream Cheese Frosting Cake: ½ cup shortening 3 Tbs. cocoa 1 ½ cups sugar 1 cup buttermilk 2 ½ cups sifted cake flour 1 tsp. salt 2 eggs 1 Tbs. vinegar 1 tsp. vanilla 1 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. butter flavoring 1 ½ oz bottle of red color Cream shortening and sugar. Beat in eggs, vanilla, and butter flavor. Make a paste of cocoa and food coloring and add it to the first mixture. Alternately add flour and buttermilk. Mix baking soda and vinegar in a small bowl; add to batter. Bake in three 9” or 10” pans for 20-25 minutes at 350o. Let cool completely before frosting. Frosting: 6 oz. cream cheese, softened 1 tsp. vanilla 6 Tbs. butter, softened 2 cups sifted powdered sugar Blend all ingredients until smooth. Serving Suggestions for Red Velvet Cake While the cake is perfectly delicious on its own (I personally think that this is the best Red Velvet I've ever tasted) I ended up having to make mine into red velvet cake truffles by dipping them into chocolate. Add a lollipop stick and you have some delicious cake pops.

During Columbia City’s early years, Washington struggled with the prohibition issue. Temperance advocates had begun their work back in the 1850s, when Washington was still a Territory. At that time, hard-line prohibitionists were closely aligned with other “radical” causes such as the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage. Over the next half-century, the prohibition movement waxed and waned, becoming a complicated tangle of often contradictory strands including anti-immigrant sentiment, populist revolt, religious fervor, economic analysis, and an appeal to “respectable” middle-class values. While they weren’t fanatic anti-alcohol crusaders, Columbia’s founders definitely wanted a quiet, middle-class town for their children to grow up in, and their liquor policy reflected this goal. When Columbia incorporated in 1892, state law allowed local regulation of alcohol, though not prohibition, and one of the town Council’s first acts was “an ordinance fixing the amount to be paid for license to sell malt and spirituous liquors, wine, ale, etc., and providing the manner in which the same shall be issued.” The ordinance decreed that an application for a liquor license must include a $1000 bond and $500 in cash. This sounds like a lot of money in a town where entire lots went for $300, but it was a fairly standard license fee at the time, and such fees were often paid by brewers in return for an exclusive contract with a saloon. So the $500 fee alone would not have kept Columbia “dry.” An even greater hurdle was the requirement to submit a supporting petition “signed by a majority of the freeholders of the town.” Also, the establishment couldn’t be located within one block of a school or church – not an easy condition to meet in a town three blocks long, with a school on one side and a church on the other! Finally, the Council gave itself blanket discretion: “If upon consideration,” the ordinance goes on, “the Council shall deem it in the interest of the town to grant said petition and license, said license shall be issued…” but it “may be revoked or suspended at any time by the council for good cause, and the council shall be the sole judge as to the sufficiency of the cause...” Unsurprisingly, Columbia was able to boast in the 1899 City Directory that it had “Good Schools, Pure Water, [and] No Saloons” – and the town seems to have stayed saloon-free at least until it joined Seattle in 1907. This does not mean nobody was drinking, however. Columbia’s population included many German and Irish immigrants who – according to historians, not just stereotypes – often continued their traditional beer consumption at home. Other residents may well have enjoyed (perfectly legal) alcoholic beverages at home too. We may never know for sure just how much alcohol was consumed – legally or not – in those early days. We can speculate, however. One avenue for speculation involves a petition presented to the Town Council on May 1st, 1905: “We, the undersigned Mothers and Women residing in Columbia, hereby petition your Honorable Body to regulate the conduct and operation of the billiard and pool room operated on Rainier Avenue…” These 83 women wanted the pool room closed on Sundays and at 11 pm the rest of the week. The Council, at the urging of Councilman Hastings, directed the town attorney to draft an ordinance “regulating and controlling Billiard Halls and Pool Rooms. Also all places of lounging and loafing on Sundays.” Well, the loungers and loafers of Columbia City weren’t about to take this lying down. On May 18th the Council was presented with a petition signed by 90 residents of Columbia (all male, naturally) who “respectfully petition your Honorable Body not to pass an ORDINANCE as prayed for by a certain PETITION presented … at your last Meeting.” Councilmen Peirson and Raynor spoke in favor of this petition, and the Council promptly and quietly dropped the proposed ordinance. (Close inspection of the two petitions reveals that several of the women who signed the first petition were married to men who signed the second – one can only imagine their comments at the dinner table that night.) Again, we have no evidence of anyone selling or consuming spirituous beverages at the pool hall on Rainier – we are still firmly in the realm of speculation. The 1905 City Directory doesn’t list a pool room in Columbia, though there was a “pool hall & barber” in Hillman City. The pool – barber combo seems to have been a popular one back then – Lee Gardner and Menzo LaPorte owned such an establishment in Columbia from 1908 to 1923. It certainly sounds like a rather comfortable, decidedly masculine hang-out from which wives might well have had difficulty extracting their husbands of an evening – particularly if you imagine the lure of a drink or two. When Columbia was annexed to Seattle in 1907, it became part of a “wet” urban zone in an increasingly “dry” state – but this didn’t appear to have much of an effect on Columbia City. The prohibitionists continued to fight for a statewide liquor ban, gaining ground as they became more politically savvy. In 1914 Washingtonians approved a “dry” ballot resolution that took effect on January 1st, 1916. All over the city, liquor stores and saloons desperately sold out their inventory as the clocked ticked down, and in the wee hours of January 1st the police dutifully arrested a couple of Pioneer Square bar owners to mark the start of the dry era. Four years later the 18th Amendment was ratified, and Prohibition took effect nationwide. But Seattle’s “dry” years were anything but, and at least one Rainier Valley resident played a key role in that story. Tune in next month for more about bootlegging, “blind pigs” and the Rum King!

Thursday and Sunday was spaghetti day Rainier Valley’s Italian heritage goes back a hundred years or more. Back then, the Valley was largely forests and farms, with the streetcar running down the middle. Many of the area’s farmers were immigrants, and many of those immigrants were from Italy. In fact, the neighborhood around Atlantic Street was so heavily dominated by Italians that it was called “Garlic Gulch.” These Italian immigrants brought a rich culinary tradition to the Rainier Valley that can still be enjoyed today. The Borracchini family opened a bakery in the Italian neighborhood in 1922, and their son Remo, still operates it. Remo describes the neighborhood when he was a child: “Our church was Mt. Virgin church. We had several Italian grocery stores at Atlantic Street, Italian pharmacy, Italian barbershop. The residents were mainly east and west of Rainier Avenue going all the way up to Beacon Hill. As far south as – oh, a little south of McClellan Street. We had the ballpark. We had the Vacca Brothers farm. And we had the Italian language school here, at Atlantic Street.” Vincent LaSalle also grew up in Garlic Gulch. His family owned a grocery store and meat market on Atlantic Street. “On one side was the meat market. My uncle was a good butcher and they used to cut their own meat. They had this great big walk-in icebox. They had a sawdust floor. I remember in one corner of the icebox, they had a great big fifty-gallon barrel. And in that barrel was pickled pig feet. Oh, god! You never tasted anything like that. Everything used to taste so good!” Ralph Vacca, grandson of one of the original Vacca Brothers, says that in his family “Thursday and Sunday was spaghetti day. You could count on it. It may be mustaciolli one Thursday and it may be spaghettini on a Sunday. It may be bow ties and it may be something else. But always, always Thursday and Sunday, in our household. And I would venture to say that if you talked to some others, you’ll get a smile, if you say, ‘Thursday and Sunday was spaghetti day.’ It was always good. It certainly wasn’t Franco American in a can, that’s for damned sure.” Vincent Lasalle:  “Oh, when they used to make spaghetti and meatballs at my grandma’s place. My grandma would mix the meat -- a combination of pork meat and beef all chopped up, see -- and put garlic and different kinds of flavors in it. Salt and pepper. She’d mix it all up and then [her daughters] used to take it and roll it into little balls. You’d have a stack of meatballs this big and they’d put that in the tomato sauce. Oh god! I never tasted meatballs like that.”

Rainier Valley’s Italian heritage goes more than a hundred years. Back then, the Valley was largely forests and farms, with the streetcar running down the middle. Many of the area’s farmers were immigrants, and many of those immigrants were from Italy. In fact, the neighborhood around Atlantic Street was so heavily dominated by Italians that it was called “Garlic Gulch.” The Borracchini family opened a bakery in the Italian neighborhood in 1922, and their son Remo, still operates it. Remo describes the neighborhood when he was a child: “Our church was Mount Virgin church. We had several Italian grocery stores at Atlantic Street, Italian pharmacy, Italian barbershop. The residents were mainly east and west of Rainier Avenue going all the way up to Beacon Hill. As far south as – oh, a little south of McClellan Street. We had the ballpark. We had the Vacca Brothers farm. And we had the Italian language school here, at Atlantic Street.” Our Lady of Mount Virgin Catholic Church was the spiritual heart of the Italian community, watched over by Father Lodovico Caramello from 1913 to 1949. Mr. and Mrs. Mike Eronemo, pictured at left above with their attendants, were married at Mount Virgin in 1915, no doubt by Fr. Caramello himself. The bride and her maid of honor wear traditional Italian wedding garb. The happy couple celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1965 with a daughter, two sons, and five grandchildren. In 1940, Interstate 90 sliced through the heart of the Italian Community in North Rainier and tunneled through the Mount Baker neighborhood to reach Lake Washington and the first floating bridge. Garlic Gulch never fully recovered. Mount Virgin still stands today in the shadow of the I-90 lid.

RVHS Founder Buzz Anderson with KUOW radio host Steve Scher discuss Columbia City history on 1.26.2001

Katherin Albrecht (Albright) grave site, Comet Lodge Cemetery, circa 1970, Denis Law Collection, RVHS. Comet Lodge Cemetery is one of those stories that seems to constantly come back into the collective conscious, and then just as quickly as it came, it disappears again. Newspapers write about it, there’s presumably some outrage and then it disappears, once again. The cemetery’s first recorded burial is of 53 year old pioneer of the area, Samuel Maple (the gravestone spells it Mapel) who died in 1880. The next recorded burials would not be until 1884. The cemetery itself would not be named, or have any relation to Comet Lodge No. 139 of the I.O. O. F. (International Organization of Odd Fellows) until 1895. This is where the name Comet Lodge comes into the story, however most obituaries of people who were interred here state that it is the I.O.O.F. Cemetery-Georgetown. The cemetery hosts some well-known people of their time including Dr. Emma A. Rigby, Samuel Bevan who had been the Mayor of South Park, Henry Van Asselt, and Samuel and Jacob Maple some of the first settlers in Seattle. The cemetery hosts, 490 known graves, though there may be more since potter’s graveyard was moved somewhere in Georgetown in the 1920s and Comet Lodge has been considered a likely place. Most of these graves no longer have their markers, though most of the changes were made to the cemetery after the cemetery itself had been lost by Comet Lodge No. 139, there are some that were made before. In 1927, the first shrinking of the cemetery to its now 2.5 acre size began, with Dr. Corson and his wife selling a section called Babyland. This spot, that was for the burials of infants and small children, was without disinterment, turned into housing for people. The trend of lack of disinterment is a trend that continued. Once the cemetery closed in 1937, as the lodge had become bankrupt, there was only a handful of people who would disinter their family members as the organization had told them that they would now be in charge of caring for the plots. The graves of the Maples, and Henry Van Asselt were moved to different resting spots (the Maples to King County International Airport, Van Asselt to Lakeview Cemetery). Out of the mentioned 490 graves, only 25 of them would end up being moved, the other 465, have no records of being moved. Once the cemetery was foreclosed upon however, it fell completely into disrepair and became a popular spot for sneaking into and, supposedly stealing gravestones, as people assumed everyone who had been buried had been disinterred. There were several attempts at cleaning up the cemetery or rehabilitating it, however most of them fell through. The two of the biggest attempts came in 1987 and 1999. Neither were successful for various reasons. In 2002, Cleveland High School students with the Washington State Cemetery Association and a grant from 4Culture worked on a project. This project, in the words of the project itself “would teach research techniques and assign specific informational components of the history of the cemetery and the neighborhood to students or small groups of students. The project also encouraged students to develop a community plan to maintain the cemetery grounds. By educating students, it was the hope of WSCA to develop an appreciation for historical sites in the community and to deter the destruction of cemeteries by young adults.” This was the last attempt at any type of clean up or preservation at Comet Lodge Cemetery. Some time between these clean up attempts most of the gravestones were moved to new positions. Based on a 1976 map, 24 out of 25 remaining gravestones have become cenotaphs, stones that no longer mark the spot of the actual burial. Erwin Rigby, member of the Woodmen of the World, tree trunk grave dated 1907. Photo by Karen O’Brien From death dates and birthdates, to how people viewed those who had passed on or something about the deceased themselves, gravestones can give an astounding amount of historical information, and graves at Comet Lodge Cemetery are no different. The cenotaphs of Augustus Twombly (d. 1901) and Erwin Rigby (d.1907) are both tree trunk graves. These graves tend to be about a life cut short, and these stones were common in some areas, easily bought from a Sears & Roebuck catalogue. For both of them however, it also means they were a member of the Woodmen of the World, a fraternity organization that disbursed insurance and would purchase stones for their members.These stones are usually easy to spot for membership. The top knot above the name will have the symbol of the Woodmen of the World (Now Modern Woodmen of America) two crossed hatchets. Other cenotaphs in the cemetery also tell stories of those who had lived there in the past. Ernst Pique, a German immigrant has a particularly ornate stone, designed with floral motifs talking highly of him throuugh ivy, ferns, the backside of his stone also has an engraving written in German. This year we had our first (two!) tours at Comet Lodge where we shared the history of the cemetery, stories of some who were buried there, and discussed the gravestone art. It was a success with two sold out tours with 30 people all together, and I can’t wait to do the tour again next year. RVHS Program and Archives Manager, Katharine Anthony leading a tour at Comet Lodge Cemetery, Nov. 2nd 2019. Photo by Karen O’Brien.

Before the Seattle Mariners, there were the Seattle Rainiers who are playing for the pennant in this story that shows how baseball unites diverse communities. Tour the Seattle of 1955 with Huey as he and his neighborhood cheer for the Seattle Rainiers. If only Huey can find his missing ticket to the game! This nostalgic and historical picture book follows Huey through South Seattle as he retraces his steps through the charming neighborhood surrounding Sick’s Stadium to find his lost ticket--and follows him through the big game to victory. Neighbors from all different backgrounds listen to the game, announced by the beloved Leo Lassen, as Huey visits locally owned shops like the Italian bakery and the Japanese fish market. Featuring the vibrant retro illustrations by Larry Gets Lost series creator John Skewes, Ticket to the Pennant celebrates diversity and will be cherished by baseball fans young and old.

by Mikala Woodward, Excerpted from Rainier Valley Food Stories Cookbook Butchering seems to run in families. Jim Ackley, owner of Bob’s Quality Meats in Columbia City, took over the business from his father, Bob Ackley. Bob himself is a third generation meat man who owned a meat market in West Seattle for many years. Bob bought the Columbia City business in the early 1980s from the widow of Butch Nelson, whose father had opened Nelson’s Meat Market in that location in 1909. Which is all to say that the meat market roots at 4861 Rainier Ave are deep and wide, as are the stories. When Bob moved his West Seattle meat market to Columbia City in 1981, he knew he would be serving a different population: more diverse, and less affluent. Bob reached out to African American customers by advertising in newspapers like The Facts and The Seattle Medium. His supplier warned him that his trademark high-quality meat, with its higher prices, might not sell well in his new neighborhood. “My supplier said for me to come over here and sell junk. I says, ‘I won’t do that. I’ve never done that. All I sell is the best I can buy.’ He says, ‘You won’t stay in business.’ I says, ‘I don’t believe that. These people deserve to have a good place to come buy decent meat, see.’ So that’s what I did.” Bob did make some changes in his business: “I put out some Swedish potato sausage, [and people said,] ‘What’s that?’ they didn’t know what Swedish potato sausage was. ‘Okay, what do you like?’ ‘I like somethin’ that’s hot.’ So, I proceeded to develop sausages that were hot. I’d make a little a bit of sausage and I’d cook some and put it on the counter. And I kept doing that until I hear, ‘Boy, this is just right’ see. “Then they said, ‘Well, you know, that’s beef.’ But there’s folks that likes a hot pork sausage, so we developed a hot pork sausage. I had some guy send me up some of it from Texas. And I thought, ‘Boy, [if] they buy that down there, their gonna love what I’m gonna fix them.’ So I made a real good sausage. We named it ‘Texas Hot’ and it’s hotter than a pistol. That went over very, very well. We started out with a nothing sausage business to virtually tons of it, see.” Bob came to be known in the neighborhood for his willingness to go the extra mile, especially around the holidays. “[Thanksgiving is a] very busy time. I brought in some nice young turkeys, by order only. You couldn’t [just walk] in and buy a turkey. Although I always bought extra turkeys—there was two principals and three policemen and one or two college professors that had a memory worse than mine. And they would come in [on the day before Thanksgiving] and they absolutely expected that [there would be a turkey for them]. So I always made sure I had it for them. They’d come in, ‘I want to get a turkey, Bob.’ I knew what they wanted and I knew exactly what size they needed. I even had their names on them, see.” Bob even sold fool-proof turkeys with a timer put in them. “We had a lot of young people, and both man and wife are working. Some of these lovely young ladies didn’t know how to cook. So, I got the finest turkey I could get, and we had a timer put into them. Then no matter how bad a cook you are, you can’t make a mistake on this, you see?” These days Bob’s son Jim is offering another Thanksgiving convenience: a smoked turkey, which just has to be heated up in the oven for an hour, and tastes wonderful.

"It's hard for anyone, even the most pessimistic of pessimists, to spend more than a few minutes in Central Park without feeling that he or she is experiencing some tense in addition to the present." - Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Okay, so Central Park’s got a few years on Columbia School, but I do feel this way when I walk through the halls at Orca @ Columbia. The future tense might be a little hazy right now, with the District considering closing the building. But the place is saturated with the past, reaching back through more than a century of teachers, students, and community. The school went up to 8th grade. I don’t know exactly what the students learned in their rows of bolted-down desks, but I imagine the curriculum was heavy on the three ‘R’s. Many kids rode the streetcar to school – some even came by boat from Renton to Rainier Beach and then rode the trolley to Columbia. Columbia School District #18 – which eventually included Brighton, Dunlap, Van Asselt, Emerson, and Muir – paid the streetcar fare. The little town of Columbia – and its school – grew steadily through the turn of the century. The town was annexed to Seattle in 1907, and Columbia School became part of Seattle’s School District. In 1922 the current school building was constructed, and the old building was torn down. The bell from the old bell tower was is now in the custody of the Rainier Valley Historical Society. The school’s enrollment stayed at about 400 through the Depression, even with the addition of a kindergarten in 1936. During World War Two it rose again, as nearby wartime housing at Rainier Vista filled with families, come to Seattle from all over the country for war jobs. The District dealt with the overcrowding first by sending 8th graders to Franklin High, then by opening a temporary Columbia Annex at Rainier Vista. One day in 1942 all the Japanese kids at Columbia School suddenly vanished, sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. Many of those children never came back. The Noji family was a happy exception: Mrs. Noji had been the PTA president at Columbia School before she and her family were declared national security risks. Theo Nassar, who was 3 at the time, remembers her father carrying her on his shoulders over the hill to the Noji family’s nursery on Orcas St., telling her over and over, “They had to go away. They had to go away.” Nassar recalls that sympathetic neighbors held the Nojis’ property on their behalf; it is now the Noji Gardens housing development. Post-war economic prosperity and the baby boom transformed Columbia City and with it Columbia School. Enrollment skyrocketed. In 1958 there were 882 students attending Columbia School, taught by 21 teachers. (For the record, that’s an average class size of 42.) There were 10 portable classrooms lined up along Edmonds Street. Overcrowding was finally relieved when Dearborn Park Elementary opened in 1971. The 1970s and ‘80s were not kind to Seattle’s economy, and Columbia City suffered from a combination of economic decline, increased crime, and white flight. Columbia School’s enrollment dropped, and the District’s 1978 desegregation plan didn’t help matters. Under the plan, Columbia was paired with Olympic View Elementary in Northgate. Columbia students went to kindergarten at Columbia, then attended Olympic View for 1-3rd grade, then came back to Columbia along with Olympic View students for 4th and 5th grade. At least that’s how it was supposed to work. Actually, very few Olympic View 4th and 5th graders signed on for the long bus ride south. In 1989 the Orca alternative program moved to Columbia School from B.F. Day in Fremont. Orca had been sharing the building with traditional classes, and B.F. Day was slated for major renovations. Orca was offered the Columbia building – a long drive for most of Orca’s families. The decision to accept the move was fraught, but in the end the community was excited by the prospect of bringing alternative education to a diverse population. Over the years Orca has made its mark on Columbia School, creating the dance room, the playground, and the Garden, among other improvements. The Garden harbors many stories of its own: it has been the site of much planting and harvesting, cider pressing, chicken chasing, and at least one funeral for a class hamster. It contains solar panels and weathervanes, a giant sundial, and a memorial grove for a former Orca student. Orca has made its mark on the neighborhood as well. Many would argue that Orca’s presence contributed to the flavor of Columbia City’s revitalization in the 1990s. The process continues – with each annual Orca Garden Plant Sale, the school sends out countless seedlings into the yards of its neighbors and friends. With colorful murals broadcasting its joyful spirit to passersby, Orca has become an integral part of the life of Columbia City, just like the original Columbia School way back in 1892. Whatever happens to the site in the future, these stories from the past will remain.

On March 22, 1920, federal agents nabbed a tugboat crew unloading Canadian whiskey on a beach near Edmonds. Prohibition had been in effect for 3 months, and this was the first big raid in the Northwest – the feds seized 100 cases of liquor and arrested 11 people, including a young police lieutenant named Roy Olmstead. Olmstead was fined $500 and lost his job; the incident ended what had been a promising career in law enforcement. From a bootlegging perspective, however, it was Olmstead’s best move yet. Having spent years as a police officer studying the illegal liquor trade and building a network of high-ranking friends in judicial circles, Olmstead was now free to devote himself full time to becoming Seattle’s “Rum King.” Roy Olmstead’s bootlegging empire dwarfed any other liquor operation in Seattle, and many legal businesses as well. Seattle’s Prohibition-era booze was mostly imported from Canada, where alcohol remained legal. Roy Olmstead purchased Canadian liquor in massive quantities, loading it onto ships ostensibly headed for Mexico. (This was to avoid paying the $20-per-case fee the Canadians slapped on liquor shipments bound for the U.S.) As the ships headed south from Vancouver, they unloaded the cargo on islands in Haro Strait for later retrieval. A fleet of fast boats picked up shipments of liquor from the secret caches and delivered them all over Puget Sound, operating on dark, stormy nights in order to avoid hijackers and the Coast Guard. (The Boeing Company manufactured powerful engines for these speedboats – a side business that some say helped keep the company afloat when demand for airplanes plummeted after WWI.) Bruce Rowell, a jazz club manager from Columbia City, recalled liquor deliveries to “The Ranch,” a roadhouse on Hwy 99, north of Seattle. Roadhouses were drinking establishments located on the outskirts of towns; they took advantage of less stringent liquor laws outside city limits and allowed patrons quick access to the highway in case of a raid. The Ranch had the added advantage of proximity to a small beach where Olmstead’s running boats would unload their cargo. With his economies of scale, and without the Canadian fee, Olmstead could undersell other importers by a hefty margin. Eventually he was able to absorb or eliminate most of his competitors. Olmstead never let his rumrunners carry weapons, insisting that “Nothing we do is worth a human life.” So even though hijackers sometimes tried to steal his shipments, the liquor trade in the Northwest was far less violent than in other parts of the country, where turf wars between mobsters often led to bloody events like Chicago’s “Valentine’s Day Massacre.”. Roy Olmstead’s responsible, businesslike approach to smuggling earned him a stellar reputation (along with hundreds of thousands of dollars, of course). A gracious, gregarious man, Olmstead was welcome at Seattle’s best homes and clubs. He and his wife Elsie bought a mansion in Mount Baker (3757 Ridgeway Place), where they entertained in style. Elsie installed a radio station in a spare bedroom, and she read children’s stories over the air every night. Rumors that she used her children’s program to deliver coded messages to rumrunners on Puget Sound appear to be unfounded. Olmstead had little to fear from local law enforcement, as most of the key policemen, prosecutors, and judges were his loyal friends and customers – or on his payroll. Federal Prohibition agent William Whitney, however, developed a personal grudge against Olmstead and determined to bring him down. His agents tried every they trick in the book catch Olmstead out, and eventually resorted to tapping Olmstead’s phones. Olmstead knew his phones were tapped, but figured that since wiretapping was against state law, such evidence could never be used against him. He took great pleasure in using the tapped lines to deliver false leads, along with pointed insults about Agent Whitney himself, disguised as casual conversation. It all came to a head on Thanksgiving Day, 1924, when federal agents broke into the mansion, rounded up the inhabitants, and began making telephone calls. Imitating Olmstead’s voice, Whitney invited all the bootlegger’s friends to come over for a wild party – and bring liquor. Would-be revelers who showed up with bottles and cases of booze were dismayed to find themselves corralled into the parlour at gunpoint. Olmstead, his wife, and dozens of others were arrested that night. In the end 29 people were tried, including Olmstead himself. At the trial, the illegally obtained wiretapped evidence was admitted, much to Olmstead’s lawyer’s outrage. Olmstead, on the other hand, is reported to have laughed uproariously when transcripts of his phony telephone calls were read aloud in court. Olmstead was convicted, but appealed based on the illegal wiretapping issue. Eventually the case came before the Supreme Court, which ruled against him. That wasn’t the end of the story, however. Civil liberties advocates were appalled by the Supreme Court ruling, and the dissenting opinion by Justice Louis Brandeis proved far more influential than the decision itself. “In a government of laws,” Brandeis wrote, “existence of government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the laws scrupulously… If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.” Thus we have the Rum King to thank not only for keeping Seattle in Canadian whiskey for half a decade, but also for Justice Brandeis’s famous assertion of “the right to be left alone” – and the anti-wiretapping laws Congress later passed to protect that right. Roy Olmstead’s colorful career is recounted in Emmett Watson’s book, Once Upon a Time in Seattle.

Prepared by Katie Pratt and Spencer Howard of Northwest Vernacular, Inc. on behalf of the Friends of Mount Baker Town Center with funding provided by 4Culture. The content of this article is from the nomination application for the National Park Service historic national registry. The Mount Baker Park Historic District is significant at the local level under Criterion A in the area of significance of community planning and development. The neighborhood is an early example of a planned neighborhood within the city of Seattle and continues to reflect the developers’ careful design and layout of the addition. The district is also eligible under Criterion C in the area of significance of architecture and landscape architecture as an early planned neighborhood in the City of Seattle. The neighborhood features a significant concentration of intact, well-designed, and constructed early 20th century residences, parks, and boulevards. These single-family houses reflect a variety of period revival, eclectic, and Northwest-based architectural styles, many of which were designed by influential local architects. The parks and boulevards reflect the influence of the City Beautiful movement. PERIOD OF SIGNIFICANCE The period of significance begins with the date of construction of the oldest house (3156 35th Avenue S) constructed within the neighborhood (1900) that is still extant and ends with the formation of the Committee to Revitalize Mount Baker in 1968. By 1968, the neighborhood was fully constructed and little new construction has happened since that date. This period of significance contains the bulk of the development that has occurred within the neighborhood, including the few buildings constructed prior to the 1907 plat of the Mount Baker Park Addition. MOUNT BAKER PARK ADDITION The Hunter Tract Improvement Company platted the Mount Baker Park Addition in 1907 to establish an elite, upper-class, single-family neighborhood with well-designed houses, graciously landscaped boulevards, waterfront access, and a system of parks to provide natural respite for residents. Developers also created deed restrictions to ensure the quality of the new neighborhood. The Mount Baker Park Addition was one of the largest planned communities in Seattle at the time. Despite its early exclusivity, the neighborhood was not immune to social, economic, and racial strife. Over the course of its history, the Mount Baker Park Improvement Club, the neighborhood’s social club, fought particularly hard to maintain the neighborhood’s exclusivity through their Restrictions Committee. Integration in the post-World War II period challenged its early exclusivity and a new and more diverse resident base took root in Mount Baker. The club’s name change to Mount Baker Community Club and its formation of the Committee to Revitalize Mount Baker mark this clear shift in the neighborhood. Early Contact and Settlement The area which now comprises the Mount Baker Park Addition was originally home to the Xacua’bs (hah-chu- AHBSH) or “lake people” – a branch of the Duwamish tribe, a Southern Puget Sound Coast Salish people. Duwamish is an Anglicization of Dkh[W]’Duw’Absh, which means “The People of the Inside” in the Salish Lushootseed language. The inside refers to Elliott Bay, the Duwamish River, and connecting waterways. Lake Washington, which defines the current neighborhood’s eastern boundary, was a significant place in the lifeways of the Xacua’bs, who sited villages along the shores of Lake Washington and fished its abundant waters. The arrival of white settlers in the region disrupted the lives of the Duwamish people and neighboring tribes. Treaties between the U.S. Government and area tribes, orchestrated by territorial governor Isaac S. Stevens, further complicated already tenuous relationships. Early white settlers to live or claim property in the area known today as Mount Baker Park were David “Doc” Maynard (1808-1873) and David Denny (1832-1903). Maynard arrived in the 1850s, staking a claim in the present-day Mount Baker and Rainier Valley area, and Denny purchased land which was later sold to the Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad, who in turn sold the land to Daniel Jones of the Hunter Improvement Company. Areas which include the current Mount Baker Park Addition were annexed by the City of Seattle in 1883 and 1907. The 1883 annexation included the area between S Hanford Street and S Atlantic Street, the northern portion of the Mount Baker Park Addition. The 1907 annexation was part of the town of Southeast Seattle, which appears to have incorporated specifically to petition Seattle for annexation. Southeast Seattle incorporated on July 2, 1906 and included several neighborhoods, roughly bounded by 24th Avenue S on the west, S Hanford Street on the north, Lake Washington on the east, and S Kenyon Street on the south. Despite being annexed, the area remained fairly removed from downtown Seattle until J.K. Edmiston financed construction of the Rainier Avenue Electric Railway, which opened in 1890 and provided transit between downtown Seattle and towns to the south. This streetcar line ran along present-day Rainier Avenue S, just a few blocks to the west of the western edge of the soon-to-be-developed Mount Baker Park Addition. Another streetcar was established by 1896 and extended east from downtown Seattle along S Jackson Street, turning north on 30th Avenue S to connect with E Yesler Way and continued briefly east to the end of the line and the power house. By 1915 only a spur remained at the former north turn on 30th Avenue S, and instead the line continued east to 31st Avenue S which it then followed south to S McClellan Street where it turned east and wrapped around to Mount Rainier Drive S and ended at Hunter Boulevard S into the heart of the Mount Baker Park Addition. This line remained active through 1933. By 1963 this same route was used for the trolley bus line, ending at S Hanford Street and was known as the Mount Baker Route. Easier access to downtown prompted development along the line. New additions were platted, such as George and Martha Taggart’s York Addition (1903) and the Dose Addition (1906) platted by father and son Charles P. and Charles C. Dose. Platting and Construction in the Mount Baker Park Addition As development moved forward on the York and Dose additions to the north, developer J.C. Hunter established the Hunter Tract Improvement Company in 1905 to develop an upper-class, single-family neighborhood. Other officers of the company included Daniel Jones, F.I. Fehren, and C.E. Farnsworth. Jones and Fehren worked as the sales agents for the company out of an office at 117 Cherry Street with an office and on-site manager, Mitchell Phillips, at 34th Avenue S and S McClellan Street (at the site of 3405 S McClellan Street). The company purchased 130 acres of land under Jones, land formerly owned by David Denny. Jones and Charles Dose petitioned to extend the Rainier Avenue Electric Railway, also known as the Rainier Heights streetcar line, to S McClellan Street to connect their new additions to downtown. This extension, constructed between 1911, became known as the Mount Baker Route or line. The Hunter Tract Improvement Company hired George Cotterill of the engineering firm Cotterill and Whitworth to lay out the addition. Cotterill hired landscape architect Edward O Schwagerl to create the landscape design. Their designs for the new addition incorporated recommendations from the Olmsted Brothers’ 1903 plan for Seattle’s parks and boulevards, establishing Mount Baker Park and Lake Washington Boulevard S along Lake Washington and connecting boulevards. In fact, in 1906 John Charles Olmsted of the Olmsted Brothers reviewed the addition’s design at the request of Daniel Jones and recommended deed restrictions to ensure its quality and exclusivity. John Charles Olmsted toured the development area with Cotterill, reviewed the plat layout, and provided a letter report. In 1910, John Charles Olmsted later provided comments on improvements to some of the smaller parks within the plat for the City parks department. The Hunter Tract Improvement Company filed the plat for the Mount Baker Park Addition in June 1907. The plat consisted of 70 blocks over 200 acres. The deeds of sale for parcels within the neighborhood, as was common for the time, did contain restrictive covenants, many of which were based on the suggestions of John Charles Olmsted. These covenants required single-family residences, 25-foot minimum front setback from the street, and minimum construction costs of $2,000 to $5,000 (depending on the lot). The exception to the single-family rule was for a sole commercial building at 35th Avenue S and S McClellan Street. This original commercial building, the Mount Baker Park Garage, featured a garage at grade and a clubhouse above; the Mount Baker Center building replaced it in 1930. Advertisements for the neighborhood emphasized not only the natural beauty of the developing neighborhood, but the envisioned exceptionality of both the neighborhood and its intended residents. One such advertisement in The Seattle Times stated, Your home and surroundings should be on a par with your own character. If your tastes incline toward select society, exclusive environment, lovely landscapes, artistic architecture, congenial companions, accessible location, and surrounding of natural beauties, combined with the best of man-made advantages, you will want to live in Mount Baker Park The neighborhood began to take shape in its first few years, with over 100 residences constructed between 1907 and 1910. In addition to these early residences, key development during these first few years was the construction of Mount Baker Park, several pocket parks, and two boulevards: the 3-block long Hunter Boulevard and the curving Mount Baker Boulevard. Other improvements include macadamized roads and cement sidewalks, curbs, and gutters. The Mount Baker streetcar line was extended south to Hanford Street, providing residents greater access to downtown Seattle by 1911. An important development in the neighborhood was the establishment of the Mount Baker Park Improvement Club in 1908 (the club still exists and is currently known as the Mount Baker Community Club). The club initially concerned itself with promoting neighborhood development, beautification, safety, and public benefits. When the club officially incorporated on January 12, 1910, each property owner within the neighborhood owned one share of stock in the club. 1910-1919 Development continued at a steady pace through the 1910s. Construction occurred throughout the addition during this period, with the largest concentration of residences built along Hunter Boulevard S and 37th Avenue S between S Hanford Street and S Court Street. During this period, 293 residences were constructed during this period. Construction during this decade was also concentrated along S Mount Baker Boulevard down to 30th Avenue S. Important infrastructure and public improvements occurred during this decade, which would establish the foundation for the neighborhood’s increasing development. Constructed in 1912, the Edgar Blair-designed Franklin High School became a prominent anchor for the addition’s western edge. The Mount Baker Park Improvement Club continued their community involvement during this period, forming committees to promote education, entertainment, public safety, parks and playgrounds, and street and public improvements. Previously occupying the upstairs of the neighborhood’s sole commercial building, the club constructed their own clubhouse next door. The club also successfully lobbied for the construction of a fire station, better police protection, sewer installation, garbage removal, and street paving. As the club sought to protect the neighborhood from “undesirables” it actively campaigned to prevent non-whites and other minorities from purchasing property within the neighborhood, forming the “Restrictions Committee” by 1915. This committee even went as far to draft an agreement between 1919 and 1920 for property owners to sign guaranteeing they would only sell or lease their property to Caucasian; such a practice was common during the early to mid-20th century as racial segregation continued in full force. The club also sought to block non-single family use and construction within the neighborhood. In addition to the restrictive covenants attached to the deeds, there was an assumption that the Hunter Tract Improvement Company would not approve sales to “undesirable” races. However, during this decade, the neighborhood experienced the first cracks in its rigid stance on exclusivity. Two lawsuits were filed in 1910 which challenged these racist actions. First, the Hunter Tract Improvement Company filed a lawsuit against Samuel and Susie Stone and Marguerite Foy. In 1909, Foy, a white woman, had sold a parcel of land within the Mount Baker Park Addition to Samuel and Susie Stone, a black couple. The company sued after the Stones were mid-construction on their new house (3125 34th Avenue S), contesting that Foy and the Stones had intentionally concealed the Stones’ race. Prominent black attorney Andrew Black defended the Stones and persuaded Judge John F. Main of the King County Superior Court to side with the Stones and Foy. The Hunter Tract Improvement Company appealed, but the Washington State Supreme Court upheld Main’s decision. Andrew Black had represented a similar case the same year; David Cole, a black railroad porter for the Northern Pacific, sued the Hunter Tract Improvement Company for withholding the deed to a lot in the Mount Baker Park Addition for which he had already paid. Like the Stone case, the court upheld Cole’s right to purchase property in the neighborhood. 1920-1929 The neighborhood continued to infill through the 1920s, with increased development along S Mount Baker Boulevard, 30th Avenue S, and view lots along Cascade Avenue S, Lakewood Avenue S, Shoreland Drive S, Mount Baker Drive S, and Mount St Helens Place S. By the end of the 1920s, the neighborhood was largely completely built up; 85-percent of the current properties within the nominated historic district were constructed by the end of 1929. In addition to the slew of residential development in the district, a non-residential building was constructed in the neighborhood during this period—the Mount Baker Park Presbyterian Church. The church began as York Methodist, with both Methodists and Presbyterians sharing a building at 34th Avenue S and S Horton Street constructed between 1902 and 1906, just west of the Mount Baker Park Addition. The church grew to have more Presbyterian members and changed its name to York Presbyterian in 1906 then Mount Baker Park Presbyterian in 1910. As the church grew and the Mount Baker Park neighborhood developed, the congregation began to consider constructing a new building and moving to a more central location within the neighborhood. The church first tried to construct a building at 34th Avenue S and S McClellan Street, but several neighbors sued the congregation in 1920 to prevent construction of the church building. The church purchased a different parcel, at the southwest corner of S Hanford Street and Hunter Boulevard S and proceeded with their plans to construct a new building. Discrimination continued during this period and, despite losing lawsuits, the Mount Baker Improvement Club’s Restrictions Committee remained active. The committee disseminated another agreement within the neighborhood for property owners to not rent, sell, or lease to blacks and “Mongolians.” This exclusivity was not limited to the Mount Baker Park Addition; in fact, it was during this period that deeds began to include racial discrimination clauses. These restrictions were affirmed by a 1926 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Corrigan v. Buckley) and, according to the University of Washington’s Seattle Civic Rights & Labor History Project, were “an enforceable contract and an owner who violated them risked forfeiting the property. 1930-1945 The neighborhood was mostly complete by 1930, with limited new construction following the Great Depression and into the 1940s. It was during this period that the neighborhood began to change from a predominately upper-class neighborhood to one with a variety of income levels. The effects of the Great Depression were felt within the district as unemployment rates climbed; the upper class was not immune to the economic distress in the city and nation. The most significant construction in the neighborhood during this time was the completion of the Art Deco Mount Baker Center (1930). The new building replaced the addition’s one commercial structure and was designed by premier Seattle architect John Graham, Sr. The building had retail on the ground floor; tenants over the years included Kefauver & White, grocers; Van de Kamp’s bakers; Barney O’Connor Drugs; and Robert McNamara’s “Bob McNamara Drugs” (beginning in 1939 until 1966). Apartment units were constructed on the upper floor in 1939. One other notable building project during this period was the construction in 1936 of a model house by department store Frederick & Nelson just south of the nominated historic district. The store had the house at 3846 Cascadia Avenue S to display furniture, one of four models scattered across the city. Construction of the house attests to the overall wealth and development in this neighborhood, even amidst the Great Depression, and anchored around the Mount Baker Park Addition. The Rainier Valley interurban line was replaced in 1937 by buses, also called “trackless trolleys;” and the streetcar line directly to Mount Baker was also replaced by buses around the same time. A significant transportation project occurred north of the neighborhood during the late 1930s, a massive bridge to increase eastern access to Seattle. The floating bridge, designed by engineer Homer Hadley (1885-1967) was completed in 1940 for just under $9 million. Upon completion, the Lake Washington Floating Bridge (renamed to honor Lacey V. Murrow Bridge in 1967) stretched 1.5-miles in length and earned acclaim as the largest floating structure in the world and the first constructed of reinforced concrete. The bridge carried I-90 traffic to and from Seattle via tunnels bored under the Mount Baker neighborhood (north of the Mount Baker Park Addition). Although construction did not occur within the boundaries of the Mount Baker Park Addition, it did affect the neighborhood. Many neighbors opposed the construction, seeking to keep their neighborhood quiet and exclusive as construction equipment used S Mount Baker Boulevard and Lake Park Drive S as an access route down to Lake Washington. Discrimination and exclusivity continued in the neighborhood during the 1930s, with neighbors and the Mount Baker Park Improvement Club dissuading non-whites from buying property. The club even went as far to ask the Park Board to develop a segregation plan for Mount Baker Park to prevent use of the park by non-whites. The U.S. involvement in World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, briefly shifted the focus of the club and they did not enforce housing restrictions during this time. 1946-1968 Seattle grew considerably during World War II, thanks to the defense production at local shipyards and Boeing. This growth continued after the war, particularly with the return of young veterans ready to start families. With the end of the war, the Mount Baker Improvement Club returned to their enforcement of housing restrictions, both against non-white residents and multi-family dwellings. The club even hired the Burns Detective Agency in 1946 to investigate and enforce violations of the neighborhood’s housing restrictions. One such fight came to a head during the late 1940s as the club filed a lawsuit against Margaret Connell of 2812 Mount St Helens Place S. Connell, a widow, had started renting out rooms in her large 27-room house to returning veterans and their families. A judge sided with the club in the lawsuit (Gholson v. Connell) and Connell had to return her home to single-family use. Despite the efforts of the club, Mount Baker Park district became more diverse during the post-World War II period. True integration was slow; according to a May 1967 article in The Seattle Times, [T]he integration appears, in some respects, to be extended separation. It often is the block-by-block variety, with invisible lines drawn here and there, rather than everyother-house-in-the-neighborhood integration. As non-whites began to purchase more property within the neighborhood, “white flight” occurred as some white residents sold their own homes and moved. Reductions in the Boeing workforce in 1963 and 1969 also led some property owners to relocate. Long-time resident Gertrude Lewis shared with interviewer Marsha Malkin that, “’Until the 1960’s, only death and disaster would move people from these houses.’” By the mid-1960s, housing prices dropped in the neighborhood and a younger and more diverse demographic began to emerge in the neighborhood. This included an influx of property owners of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Korean descent. These new residents pushed for change in the neighborhood and the improvement club. Between 1967 and 1968, the club formed a Committee to Revitalize Mount Baker, tasked with developing new bylaws and eliminating racial discrimination. In 1968, the club changed its name to the Mount Baker Community Club to reflect open membership to all residents of Mount Baker. However, racial tension continued to occur in the neighborhood and throughout the city and nation and extended to the nearby schools, like Franklin High School. By 1967, black students comprised 19% of Franklin High School’s enrollment. In late March 1968, an altercation broke out in the halls of the school between three students – one white and two black students. The school’s principal, Loren Ralph, suspended the two black students, cousins Charles Oliver and Trolice Flavors. Flavors’ attempts to negotiate his suspension were rebuffed so he contacted his mentor, Carl Miller, a member of the Blake Student Union (BSU) at the University of Washington. Miller, along with other members of the BSU, Aaron Dixon and Larry Gossett, tried to meet with Ralph to negotiate peacefully. When those efforts were denied, the BSU students organized a gathering to peacefully protest. One hundred students, around 40 of which were non-Franklin students, marched into Ralph’s office on campus demanding Oliver and Flavors be reinstated, that a black administrator be hired at the high school level in the Seattle Public School system, that an African American history class be taught at Franklin, and that black heroes be included in the American historical figures featured on the walls of the school. This sit-in at Franklin High School was the first high-school sit-in held in Seattle. Five of the organizers— Miller, Dixon, Gossett, Gossett’s brother Richard Gossett, and Flavors— were charged with unlawful assembly.45 The three UW and BSU students—Miller, Dixon, and Gossett—were tried and found guilty in July 1968. Their case was appealed before the Washington State in January 1971; a retrial was ordered by the court but the prosecutor declined to prosecute. The three were instrumental in forming the Seattle chapter of the Black Panthers with Aaron Dixon serving as the first captain of the chapter. In the aftermath of the sit-in, the Mount Baker Improvement Club’s Franklin High School Committee pushed for a discrimination complaint to be brought against principal Loren Ralph. Significant staff turnover occurred in the fall of 1968 and a new principal and vice-principal were hired. More Recent History Significant improvement occurred in the neighborhood during the 1970s when the Mount Baker neighborhood was selected as the first action area for Seattle’s Neighborhood Housing Rehabilitation Program. This program provided low interest home loans to help property owners repair their houses to meet current building code. Many property owners in the neighborhood took advantage of this program and the neighborhood’s excellent condition and physical integrity is likely the result of such efforts. Little development occurred in the neighborhood, but commercial development expanded to the west of the neighborhood along Rainier Avenue S. A pedestrian overpass constructed in 1976 connected neighborhoods west of Rainier Avenue S with the Mount Baker Park Addition at Franklin High School. The school continued to increase in diversity; and by 1972, the school’s student body was 30% black, 30% Asian American, and 40% white.50 The school, which had deteriorated over time, was designated a city of Seattle landmark in 1986 and a 1990 renovation by Bassetti Morton Metler Rekevics Architects rejuvenated the school’s visual presence. By the late 1980s, the neighborhood had greater diversity in its residents, with neighbors of Chinese, Japanese, Laotian, and Ethiopian descent. Today it continues to have a diverse demographic, but housing prices have continued to climb. Editor’s note: RVHS congratulates Mount Baker Park on its recent National Registry status.

“He kept saying, ‘I want a sweet potato pie like my mother made.’” by Mikala Woodward, Excerpted from Rainier Valley Food Stories Cookbook Rainier Valley Food Stories is a multi-cultural oral history and documentary project about food in the Rainier Valley. The Rainier Valley Historical Society collected pictures, recipes, and stories about food from all the ethnic groups in the Rainier Valley, and published them in a community history cookbook. Here are excerpts from an interview Mikala Woodward did with Ilda Jackson, a white woman who married an African American man in 1955. IJ: I was born in Wapato, Washington which is fourteen miles from Yakima. Came over here when I was nine months old and been here ever since. My dad was a tugboat captain. We were one of the lucky ones, that he did have a job during the Depression. ‘Course they didn’t get paid very often, but he had a job. I went to school [in Seattle], went to Queen Anne High School. Got married in ’42 when the war was declared ‘cause everybody got married. Joycie was born in ’43. Jeannie was born in ’44 and then my husband went in the army and when he came home the boy was born in ’47. That was my first batch. Then my second batch was [born in] ’51, ’61 and ’63. MW: Can you tell me a little bit about how you met your [second] husband? IJ: I met him through a gal at work. She was a marvelous wit. She never said anything risqué or anything – it was just funny, the way she’d phrase things. I just thought she was great. She asked me if I wanted to come by her house and meet some friends, and so I did. I met him when he came with a couple of other people. I looked at him, I thought he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. And I still do. [Laughs] We got married in ’55, so we’ve been married about forty-seven going on forty-eight years. I think he’s the luckiest man in the world to get me for two dollars. That’s all it cost for a marriage license in those days. [Laughs] Ilda and her husband ran into trouble when they tried to buy a house in the Rainier Valley in the 1950s. IJ: I never had any idea at all that I’d run into anything. I found this house when he was at sea – he sailed for the MSTS. He was gone for two and a half to three months at a time – they went from here over to Yokohama then down to Manila, then someplace else, and then back up to Yokohama and then back to here. They ferried servicemen, their wives, their goods, like if they were being transferred over there to the Orient. Oh, and supplies for the troops. That’s what they did. But, when I found the house, I put a hundred dollars down for earnest money, and [the mortgage company] called me constantly—“When is Mr. Jackson gonna be home ‘cause we want to get the papers signed.” It was through FHA so we both had to sign them. But when his boat came in, and we went down to sign the papers, they looked at him and suddenly they couldn’t handle the loan. But nevertheless we found the First Mortgage Company which took over the loan, because he was a government worker and had been for fourteen years. It was Sparkman and MacLean, by the way, that turned us down. So when they went belly up, I laughed all day. It made my day. [Laughs] MW: So, you weren’t expecting that kind of discrimination. IJ: No, I wasn’t really familiar with all the ins and outs of the differences between the blacks and the whites in those days. I know that the police were really hard. We couldn’t go anywhere. Everybody gawked so that it was embarrassing. Because up until the soldiers started bringing girls home from Korea that they had married, you never saw much of a mixed couple. Just occasionally, and I mean occasionally. MW: Was that hard on your marriage? IJ: Well, he was gone all the time, so I worked, and the kids and I—we were here alone. Then when he came home—no, I guess not. Because we’ve never been the type to drink and carouse or be out and around. We used to take the kids and go to the drive-in movies because that was safe. But other than that, we didn’t do a great amount. I suppose if we’d been the bon vivant type where we were out bumming around we might have run into a lot of it, but we just weren’t. MW: Was this neighborhood pretty mixed at that time? IJ: No. No. My husband was the only minority in the whole block when we first moved in. Down there where that big housing project deal is [Rainier Vista? Holly Park?] , when we moved in here it was a dairy farm. Everybody was all white at that time. But then, things have changed, of course. There were no Orientals in this area either at that time. It was just lily white. MW: So, you’ve seen it really change and change. IJ: Oh yes, yes, yes. Now I’m the minority, so what comes around goes around, I guess. Or goes around comes around. [Laughs] Conversation turns to food… IJ: I like to cook. I like to try recipes. MW: Did you learn any new food from your husband’s family? IJ: Well, my husband’s family lived back in Little Rock. And, no, because I never met any of them unless they came out here. Jack, my husband, he’s never been a cook or anything like that, so when it came to sweet potato pies he kept saying, “I want a sweet potato pie like my mother made.” Well, I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, because as far as I was concerned sweet potatoes were made for candied [yams] and nothing else. And, so, I made a pumpkin pie. “No, that’s not it.” I made this one. I asked every black girl I knew or anybody from the South for their recipe for sweet potato pie. “No, this is not it, no, this is not it.” So finally I just got mad and quit. And then we went to a picnic and there was a sweet potato pie. And he took a bite and he said, “This is it! This is it!” So, I went to Mrs. Garnett and she gave me the recipe. So then I was able to make them. But it’s not like pumpkin pie at all, I just thought it was. Well, my daughter called me up one day and she said, “I’ve got a sweet potato pie recipe that’ll makes yours look sick.” I said, “I don’t believe it.” So we made them and oh boy is it good. It’s called a custard sweet potato pie. And it is good. They’ve got a whole cube of butter in a pie, you know. Not counting the sugar. Talk about good. Mmm. I had a girlfriend named Lily, she said, “You know, that’s so good it makes you want to go out and hit a tree.” Mrs. Garnett’s Sweet Potato Pie Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 2 medium sweet potatoes 1/2 cup butter 2 eggs 1 1/4 tsp vanilla 1 1/2 tsp nutmeg 1 cup sugar, or to taste 1/4 cup flour uncooked pie shell Bake or boil the sweet potatoes until they are soft. Beat them with the other ingredients until light and fluffy. Pour into pie shell. Bake at 350° for 1 hour. Custard Sweet Potato Pie Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 1 cup yams 1 cup sugar 1/4 cup butter 1 tsp cinnamon 3 eggs 1 can evaporated milk 1 tsp allspice dash salt uncooked pie shell Bake or boil the yams until they are soft. Put all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into pie shell. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes, then turn oven down to 350° and bake for another 45 minutes.