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  • The Lost World of Neighborhood Groceries

    Whenever young Bernice Boley had a little money, she’d head over to Vincent’s grocery for some penny candy: this was the 1930s, and a handful of hard candy could be had for just one cent. Vincent’s was right across the street from Whitworth, where Bernice went to school, and when the last bell rang there’d sometimes be quite a crowd. The tiny store occupied the front room of Mrs. Stella Vincent’s house, and it allowed Mrs. Vincent to earn a little extra money at home – no small matter during the Great Depression. The house had two entrances, each with its own porch: a larger public one for the store, and a private one for the family. Inside, Bernice recalls, the store had “glass counters, and things were displayed on shelves. You had to ask for candy at the counter, and they’d put it in a bag for you.” "It wasn't just candy, but that's what I went there for!" Mrs. Vincent’s children went to Whitworth too, and she knew the neighborhood kids well enough to help keep them in line: when Bernice’s little brother tried to buy some candy with a ten-dollar gold piece he had “borrowed” from his mother’s keepsake drawer, Mrs. Vincent called his mother to inquire, “Do you know your son’s in here with a ten-dollar gold piece?” Mrs. Boley was grateful for the call. The City Directory for 1937 lists hundreds of grocery stores in Seattle, at least 80 of them in the Rainier Valley. Tiny groceries in people’s homes served as proto-convenience stores, supplementing the larger grocery stores in regular commercial zones. Bernice’s mother, for instance, did most of her shopping at Keefe’s Grocery in Hillman City (on the northwest corner of Rainier and Orcas). “She probably went there once a week or once every two weeks. Keefe’s delivered sometimes, too.” But she might send Bernice over to Vincent’s once in a while if she ran out of milk or eggs. Places like Keefe’s allowed customers to run up a tab and pay their grocery bill monthly, or when they could afford it. Vincent’s and other “cash groceries” required payment at the time of purchase. Dan Fink remembers at least three different cash groceries in the Mt. Baker neighborhood where he grew up in the 1960s. Danny, like Bernice, was a consumer of penny candy in his youth. He says the Mt. Baker Cash Grocery at the bottom of York Road “was our favorite little store, because it was right on the way home from John Muir School. There was a little old guy who ran that store with his wife, and their son and daughter-in-law also lived right by the store. I used to play with the grandkids. So we stopped there every single day [after school], and then sometimes at night my mom would send us down to the store to get some bread or some milk, instead of going to the big grocery store.” When Dan was about eleven, he and some friends had a memorable experience at their favorite store: “We thought we were pretty smart. We also didn’t like to spend too much money on candy, but we wanted the candy. So we thought the prices were too high. We decided to put up a picket line in front of this little store. We hand-painted some signs that said, “Unfair, Candy Prices Too High.” And we marched in front of his store. This guy was probably in his sixties, and he really got upset. We’re lucky he didn’t have a heart attack. He came out and he was just screaming at us.” Dan and his friends’ foray into political activism did not have the desired effect on candy prices, alas. “No, in fact, I think we might have been not allowed in the store for a while!” The Mt. Baker Cash Grocery lasted into the 1960s: when Danny was thirteen, he bought a twenty-eight cent bottle of bleach there to dye his hair. But by that point most of the small neighborhood groceries – and the larger ones like Keefe’s – had been driven out of business by the new, enormous, car-oriented, lower-priced supermarkets. Vincent’s and the other in-home groceries all reverted to residences – today you’d never know that these houses were once grocery stores. Other former groceries around the neighborhood are easier to spot. A few still serve the neighborhood as convenience stores, but most have been converted into daycares, businesses, even homes. Their odd corner entrances and large display windows reveal their previous incarnations, reminders of the lost world of penny candy, twenty-eight cent bleach, and small-scale local retail.

  • Hillman City through the ages

    Hillman City began as a stop on the Rainier Valley Streetcar line in the 1890s. The area was platted by, and named after, the notorious real estate developer C.D. Hillman. Hillman was known for his aggressive, sometimes fraudulent business practices – such as selling lots in the middle of Green Lake to people back East, who then arrived in Seattle to discover that their property was underwater. Hillman lived for a time in the peak-roofed house just behind Lough’s in this photo. Though it was never as populous as Columbia City one mile to the north, Hillman City had its own thriving business district with a real estate office, grocery and hardware store, bakery, tile factory, movie theater – even an opera house. A circular fountain at the intersection of Rainier and Orcas marked the center of the community. Hillman was annexed to the City of Seattle along with the rest of South Seattle in 1907. This building housed a cigar factory in the early 1900s. From 1933 to 1953 Lough’s Grocery and Meat Market operated here, as this 1937 photograph shows. Lough’s was a classic neighborhood grocery store, with salespeople who wrapped up your produce for you, a butcher who made his own corned beef and sausages, barrels full of pickles, monthly grocery bills instead of cash sales, and home delivery service. By the 1950s these establishments were being pushed out by supermarkets, which offered lower prices and minimal service. The 1960s and ‘70s were not kind to Hillman City – though the movie theater stayed in business, showing Asian martial arts flicks. In the 1980s, the Lough’s building became one of Hillman City’s most prominent landmarks, the Hillman City Boxing Gym. Owner Bob Jarvis trained fighters from all over the region, including the young Martin O’Malley. O’Malley’s mother encouraged him to take up boxing because it was “safer than skateboarding.” Jarvis also promoted women’s boxing matches and a controversial “mixed match” between Margaret MacGregor and Loi Chow in 1999. The building recently received a facelift and is now home to Lee’s Martial Arts Academy, providing instruction in Karate and Tae Kwon Do. C.D. Hillman’s house is still there too. “Double Exposures” is supported by the Rainier Rotary Foundation, 4Culture, and the Photographic Center Northwest

  • Columbia Electric Bakery - From Spark to Flame

    The history of bread goes back some 30,000 years, to the hunting and gathering phase of human development. Fast forward a few tens of thousands of years to 1891, and a local version of civilized society crafted by Columbia pioneers began to materialize. Lumber and shingle mills as well as the railway attracted workers who needed their daily bread. Historical records indicate several locations for bakeries along Rainier Avenue between Edmunds and Hudson Street, the two-block stretch originally designated as the business district. Frank Goetz was the proprietor of Columbia Bakery at 4855 Rainier Avenue beginning in 1914. The building was vintage 1899, a two-story wood frame commercial-residential structure. A bakery as early as 1901, it utilized a brick oven heated by burning cord wood in the baking chamber. The ashes were raked out and then the dough put in to bake. Mr. Goetz advertised “Large Cakes, Pies and Cookies Baked Fresh Every Day.” In the late 1920s this building was razed to make way for the brick clad building we see today and refer to historically as the Calvert Bakery building, where William Calvert baked breads and cakes until about 1930. About this time, Claude McNabb left Colorado with his wife Florence and children Frank, Frances, Dorothy and Claude Jr., known as “Bink”. Claude was headed north to Alaska to start a bakery but after arriving decided “that was no place to raise children.” He soon returned to the University District in Seattle where he owned and operated the Mity-Nice Bakery on the Ave. In November of 1931 a burglar fled the bakery with $7 in loot as pajama-clad Claude pulled the trigger of his revolver five times. By July of 1933, C. H. McNabb was looking for a small bakery to buy or lease, in or out of Seattle. The Columbia Electric Bakery at 4863 Rainier Avenue became that bakery and the McNabbs moved to Columbia City. At 4863-65 Rainier Avenue stood the two-story Knights of Pythias building. While the building originally featured an ornate false front with turrets, these decorative elements had been removed by the 1930s. The upstairs community gathering space had become known as Phalen Hall, named after W.W. Phalen who purchased the building in 1901. Bill Phalen, mayor of Columbia City in 1905 and again in 1907, was a successful businessman with “W.W. Phalen, Your Grocer” in the north storefront on the first floor (4863 Rainier). In the late 1930s, Columbia Electric Bakery ran Saturday specials for lemon filled and three-layer vanilla, chocolate, caramel, or coconut cakes. Also offered were assorted sliced deli meats and cheeses, Claude’s home-made mayonnaise (bring in your own container), and their own hand-dipped chocolates - stiff competition for Nick Vamkros’ Confectionery just one building to the south. Claude was also known for his rye bread crusted baked hams - customers made special requests for the cracklins left in the pan. The Columbia Electric Bakery was a union shop and Happy Cook, their first baker, was known as Cookie by the youngsters. The McNabbs lived blocks from the bakery where Claude left the family home in the early hours to begin his work day. Florence went in later, often walking home in the evenings after closing. Daughters Frances and Dorothy began working at the bakery afterschool and on Saturdays as cashiers waiting on trade. Son Frank helped with the doughnuts. But it was on Easter Monday, April 14, 1941, that the Columbia Electric Bakery really made the news. At 3:44 a.m., Battalion Chief Lincoln Johnston of Hillman Fire Station answered the first fire alarm and shortly thereafter the McNabb family heard a knock at their door. It was a man alerting Claude the bakery was on fire. Last Resort Fire Department archives reveal the two‑alarm fire started when creosote condensate on a smoke pipe ignited as the pipe overheated. The fire spread inside the walls to the other occupancies, up into the attic and through the roof. The fire was determined under control at 4:19 a.m. While the first floor of the building suffered the least damage, the Columbia Electric Bakery’s oven was ruined. Repairs were made to the building and a new roof was built over the first floor. Phalen’s Hall suffered extensive damage and the upstairs wood floor would host dances no more. A new oven was bought for the bakery and the smoke damage cleared out. In August of 1941, Claude McNabb baked the wedding cake for his daughter Dorothy’s marriage to Roy Nornholm at Columbia Congregational Church. In 1942, Claude and Florence McNabb sold the Columbia Bakery and moved to Point Mugu in California after Claude Jr. graduated from Franklin High School and was accepted for naval air training in 1943. They joined Claude’s sister and husband to manage a restaurant, motel and gas station there. Frances McNabb continued her work at the bakery with the new owner, Louis Bock who had recently arrived from Yakima, and Happy Cook is rumored to have become the manager. Mr. Bock sold to the Jack Alman brothers at some point and it became the Columbia Bakery & Coffee Shop by 1958. During the 1970s and 1980s, La Bakerery was in business and eventually, the Gather Consignment shop we know today opened its doors at 4863 Rainier Avenue South. Many thanks to Dorothy McNabb Nornholm for sharing her family memories of the bakery. Our condolences for the loss of her sister Frances McNabb Stowell on June 13, 2015. Frances was a 1939 graduate of Franklin High School, and was employed as a line cook at Franklin High School’s cafeteria for many years before retiring. Frances continued to live in her Rainier Valley home on Myrtle Street for 60 years. She was an active member of the Rainier Valley Historical Society. Also thanks to Galen Thomaier, Seattle Fire Department Historian, of Last Resort Fire Department for providing information from their archives about the fire.

  • John Parker

    Audio recording, John Parker describing the Model T Ford he built up from parts of several cars during the 1920s. https://soundcloud.com/rainier-valley-history/10005098-john-parker

  • John Croce on Italian School

    Audio recording of John Croce recollecting the Italian School from the Garlic Gulch neighborhood in the 1930s.

  • Jack Collier

    Interview of Jack Collier by Buzz Anderson from 1994.

  • Carry Me Back To Columbia City

    The song "Carry Me Back to Columbia City" sung by the Columbia Pioneers at the 1973 annual meeting.

  • Scuola Italiana

    They came down from Beacon Hill, from the Central District, and from the valley floor. Most came by foot with a friend or two. The children came to learn the language of their parents in a small building on Valentine Street behind the New Italian Café in the heart of Garlic Gulch. The Scuola Italiana Dante Alighieri, its official name, was set up by the Italian community in the 1930s to provide the formal training in Italian that was difficult to provide at home. Many immigrant families continued to speak their regional dialect, if they spoke Italian at all at home. According to Italian-American businessman John Croce, Mussolini sent a teacher over and this teacher was paid by the Italian government. We kids all spoke dialect Italian at home; at the school we learned how to speak correctly, read and write, pronounce, and all that. We learned how to sing Mussolini songs. We didn’t care. We didn’t care about Mussolini. We learned about the good Italian language, the verbs and all that stuff. Lucy Colarossi Salle walked the few blocks from her home near Judkins Park with a girlfriend twice a week for the after school sessions. She remembers performing in a Christmas skit for parents: In the play, the teacher had me conjugate the verb “to be.” And I was supposed to make a mistake in the play, and then say “Oh, no, no!” and then correct myself. Lucy Salle recalls that some of the boys were “mischievous,” setting off firecrackers in class. John Croce testifies to a more serious incident. Alvie, he got up and in Italian says “I hate you” and shot the teacher with a starter pistol and the guy collapsed on the floor. I was there! Then he ran out of the damn school room and he went and stayed in the woods. We had a shack up in the woods that we built out of scrap lumber. The teacher got the Italian consul, went to Alvie’s old man and Alvie’s old man was looking for him for a week to beat the hell out him. Finally Alvie come out of hiding and the old man whipped his butt. He couldn’t go back to the Italian School after that! Sometime after this episode, the professore returned to Italy, now on the verge of war. For a time, a female teacher, “a gal from the neighborhood” according to Lucy Salle, taught the children. For reasons both political and geographic, the little school in the shadow of the coming freeway did not survive into the 1940s. After the war, classes continued for a time in a borrowed classroom at the Coleman School and at Deaconess Settlement House on Atlantic Street. Caption: Christmas at the Italian School. Luce Salle is at center left, hand in coat pocket. Professore Bovio stands in the back on the left side. The cabinet is draped with the flag of the Kingdom of Italy. Photo courtesy of Lucy Salle. Listen to the audio of John Croce.

  • Rainier Valley Food Stories Cookbook

    A culinary history of the Rainier Valley going back 100 years with recipes and stories from our multicultural community. This project began with a two-year multicultural oral history project based on food, using Rainier Beach High School students and adult volunteers as interviewers. We wanted to use the universal topic of food to reach out to the many different ethnic and cultural groups in the Rainier Valley. We also worked with teen photographers from Youth in Focus to document some of the stories we uncovered.

  • Images of America: Rainier Valley

    Written by Rainier Valley Historical Society and published by Arcadia Publications. Where could one find "Garlic Gulch," a stadium named Sick, an urban fireworks factory on a hill, a Japanese American botanical garden, and the largest stand of old-growth timber in Seattle? All are icons of Seattle's Rainier Valley, an area whose past and present are richly varied. Although the fireworks factory and the stadium are gone, the smell of garlic still hangs on mixed with the aromas of Asian spices, Ethiopian coffee, Mexican salsa, and fish and chips. Saved from development by the organized protests of the community, the 85-year-old botanic garden still thrives. And Seward Park, with its virgin timber, is celebrating its 100th anniversary as a public park. The Rainier Valley, one of the most ethnically and economically diverse communities in the country, is a reflection of the many families, businesses, and events that filled the past 150 years

  • Lessons in Civic Activism: Greenwood Gardens

    In the 1970s, people had all kinds of ideas about what should go in at 38th and Othello—a police station, a bible college, a Native American cultural center staffed with armed guards and encircled by an electrified fence—but what mattered most to those who lived in the surrounding South Seattle neighborhoods was what shouldn’t be there: the Greenwood Gardens apartment complex. Rising up from a sea of empty parking lots, the olive drab, two, three, and four-story buildings were arrayed over seven acres between the Holly Park housing project and what was then Empire Way. Squares of blue, gray, green or unpainted plywood had been fastened over all the windows, which had been systematically smashed out, diving the facades into peculiar geometric grid suggesting some purpose other than human habitation. From the day it was built in 1970, Greenwood Gardens appeared with alarming regularity in the police paper’s police blotter as the location of a lurid catalog of urban dysfunction: vandalism, prostitution, child neglect, drugs, robbery. Built to accommodate four times the density of living units as the adjacent Holly Park housing project, Greenwood Gardens seemed a crystallization of anxieties about a crowded, desperate, dangerous future for the Rainier Valley. The project had been born in 1968 as a charitable initiative of the Central Aera’s first African Methodist Episcopal church, which had been at the forefront of black Seattle’s fight against segregation. But before the permits for low-income housing were approved, the church backed out. Sound Lakeview, a California firm which envisioned Greenwood Gardens as a middle class rather than low-income development, took over and, in August of 1969, secured a 4.6 million dollar federal loan. The shift in emphasis came at just the time when the desired middle income renters were fleeing the Rainier Valley in droves. Developments in the late 1960s, such as the construction of Interstate 5 and South Center malled, served to isolate Rainier Valley from the economic life of the Seattle metropolitan core. When Boeing laid off almost two thirds of its workforce in 1970 and 1971, the pain was especially sharp in the Rainier Valley, which had served as a dormitory for prospective and actual Boeing employees. Between 1960 and 1970, southeast Seattle lost 11,962 or 20% of its white residents. During the same period, in the area where Greenwood Gardens would be built, more than 40% of the white population moved away. Vacant housing jumped from 5% to 17% over the course of the decade(1) and by 1976, the apartment vacancy rate in the Rainier Valley was 20%- twice the race of the rest of Seattle. (2) Sound Lakeview, the developer took advantage of Section 236 of the National Housing Code, which had been adopted by Congress in 1968 to stimulate construction by private developers of modestly-priced multi-family housing. The bargain was that, in exchange for a 40 year loan with an interest rate of 1%, rents would be limited to no more than 25% of a tenant’s income. Also, 59 of Greenwood Gardens 294 units were to be eligible for direct rent subsidies for low income tenants who couldn’t afford even the capped rental rate. Greenwood Gardens opened in April of 1971 and over the next several months renters trickled in more slowly than anticipated, culminating in a peak occupancy rate of between 60 and 70 percent in July of 1972. By the end of 1972, of the roughly 100 families at the complex then, 59 of them lived in the low income subsidized units. Most of the full price apartments went vacant or had tenants who didn’t regularly pay their rent. Having failed to build the middle class rental community it envisioned, Sound Lakeview defaulted on its loan. In March of 1973, Greenwood Gardens came under new ownership. Instead of seeking to remedy the low occupancy problem by attracting new renters, the new owners abandoned successive buildings as vacancies increased and herded the remaining tenants into buildings at one corner of the development. Three months later, city inspectors shut down two thirds of the units for fire code and safety violations. On July 13, 1973, the Seattle Times published a front page story about Greenwood Gardens under the headline “Housing Project Quickly Becomes a Slum. (3) Despite having acquired Greenwood Gardens on very favorable terms—a reduction of the mortgage payments to interest only and tax deductions that would offset their investment in less than a year—in August of 1973, after having failed to make a single portage payment, the new owners defaulted on their purchase agreement and the property came under the ownership of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the second time in less than a year. Section 236 was created to encourage private developers, to meet the demand for low income housing and reward prudent management of the projects. Instead, as was the case at Greenwood Gardens, many took the program as an opportunity for a guaranteed short term windfall. As a Seattle Department of Planning and Development memo put it, “ownership has no incentive to add cash in any sizable amount of physically improved Greenwood. From an investment point of view it would be throwing money down the drain, since they bought a shelter for taxes, not people.” (4) There was marked neighborhood opposition to Greenwood Gardens from the start, but the decisive moment came in 1975 when two Jesuit priests arrived in South Seattle and founded the South End Seattle Community Organization (SESCO). Under the leadership of SESCO, area churches, community councils, and residents joined together, gathering signatures for petitions, lobbying politicians, and picketing government offices. With programs like Section 236, they argued, federal agencies, with the complicity of local officials, were segregating the poor in Rainier Valley. At a public meeting in 1976, Rainier Valley resident Lynn Taylor rendered the verdict of the neighborhood activists: “They have been putting low income housing here for years, where areas such as Queen Anne Hill and Magnolia are almost totally free of low income housing… It is time that southeast Seattle stand up for itself. No more low inkling housing. Demolish Greenwood Gardens.” (5)HUD for its part was determined not to write off the $5 million already invested in the project. For the Seattle Housing Authority, the organization HUD tasked with managing the redevelopment of Greenwood Gardens, the highest priority was finding housing for the city’s growing low income elderly population. Backed by a coalition of local businesses and nonprofits, the plan they settled on was to demolish the worst of the buildings and revamp the rest as low income senior housing. On September 20th 1977, after having exhausted the avenues of the official process and protest, SESCO filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court against HUD, and the SHA which sought to “enjoin the Seattle Housing Authority from permitting, or approving further design or architectural or construction or demolition work” at the site. (6).. But as the lawsuit worked its way through the court, the SHA went about its plants, demolishing more than half the units in preparation for redeveloping what remained. On June 21,1978, the judge sided with SESCO, ruling that the SHA’s Environmental Impact Statement had been conducted improperly, but contrary to their hopes, the court affirmed that the “SHA will continue to own and operate the facility to provide housing for low-income elderly persons.” And with that decision, a decade of meetings, studies, petitions, marches, all bound up in the fate of Greenwood Gardens, drew to a close. With new vinyl siding, and a new name—Holy Court—starting in 1980, the three remaining buildings have housed low income disabled and elderly residents. With the redevelopment of the Holly Park housing project in the mid-1990s, new state-of-the-art senior housing was built on the remainder of Greenwood’s footprint. Though today the name Greenwood Gardens is largely forgotten, the fight that began forty years ago over what should occupy that spot on the make was decisive in forming the Rainier Valley’s identity as a district place. It defined a fault line that has persisted in local politics between residents and outsiders, neighborhood activists and government, and provided a vocabulary for struggles with residential density and crime that redounds to this day. U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1960, Selected Population and Housing Characteristics: Seattle, WA. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1962. US Census of Population and Housing, 1970: Selected Population and Housing Characteristics Seattle-Everett, WA. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1972. Letter/Report titled: “Greenwood Gardens”: to Lee Pasquarella from Al Levine (SHA) and Jennifer Silver (DCD) Subj: “Preliminary Report on the conversion of Greenwood gardens as the site for the Southeast Multi-Service Center and related activists dated 9/19/72 Ross Anderson, :Housing Project Quickly Becomes a Slum” Seattle Times, 7/13/73 Document titled” Greenwood Apartments” to Jim Braman, Mike Hansen, dated 8/20/73 Seattle Housing Authority, Greenwood Gardens Redevelopment Environmental Impact Statement, 1976 King County Superior Court civil appearance docket- Hans P. Petersen, et. al., vs. Luther J, Carr, Chairman, Seattle Housing Authority et al., 9/20/77

  • How To Build A Bridge

    From the west slope of Beacon Hill, the Lucile Street Bridge runs under Interstate 5 and dives in a massive U over the railroad tracks at the base of the hull, delivering cars, bicycles, and pedestrians onto the streets of Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood. Passing over it, the bridge registers as nothing more than infrastructure; interchangeable with any other stretch of cement that gets a person one place to another. But some thirty-five years ago, there were people who lived and worked nearby who were passionate about the bridge—the struggled, and against considerable odds willed it into existence. This is the story of what they had to do. In 1904 the Burlington Northern and Union Pacific Railroads built a temporary wooden structure over the railroad tracks on Lucile Street. Built with two ninety-degree turns to reduce the steepness of the span, the bridge was meant for car and pedestrian traffic. By the mid-1970s the bridge was nearing the end of its useful life. In August 1976, the city and two railroads commissioned a study to determine what should be done. Consistent with the railroads' desire to spend no more money on the bridge, the study concluded that it should remain intact, but closed to auto traffic. Georgetown residents seethed when they got the word that the railroads were going back on their decades-old promise to replace the temporary structure and they were ready for a fight. In 1975, Jim Diers, a recent college graduate from Ohio arrived in Seattle with a sense of purpose—to improve the lives of regular people. He joined up with a new group called the South end Seattle Community Organization (SESCO) which was organizing residents to take on the most important problems faced by their neglected neighborhoods. In his first report on the neighborhood he had been assigned, Diers wrote “Georgetown is going industrial, but nearly 2,500 people still live amidst new industrial structures. Except for some younger transients, the residents are primarily elderly homeowners who have spent their lives in the area and intend to die there.” (1) Of the issues that residents raised with Diers, the bridge was one of the most pressing as it was one of the few remaining links between Beacon Hill and Georgetown after Interstate 5 was completed in 1968. Save Our Bridge was the original name the residents gave their group. According to Diers, “because S.O.B. gave some the mistaken impression that we favored keeping the present structure,” they renamed it the Lucile Street Bridge Committee (LSBC).(2) It was assembled from many existing groups that were active in the community including St. George’s Parish, Active Georgetown Seniors, Maple Hill Neighborhoods, and the Aeromechanic’s Union. (3) On November 6, the LSBC organized a march from Georgetown to Cleveland High School where a hearing on the fate of the bridge was scheduled. Led by an 82 year old grandma, they marched up the bridge carrying signs with slogans like “City Council, what are your RR ties?” and  “No More Studies.” The spectacle of more an 400 people—children in soccer uniforms, elderly Georgetown residents, and local politicians—crossing a 72 year old wooden bridge that had been deemed unsafe for vehicles weighing more than 3 tons did not fail to make an impression. In the school auditorium, the Seattle Banjo Club entertained the crowd with their renditions of Lucile St. Bridge is Falling Down” and “We’ve been working on the Railroad” and residents and business owners of all stripes spoke out in favor of replacing the bridge. The collection taken up that night totaled $168.53; $100 of which was donated by real estate magnate Jack Benaroya. A month later, some 250 residents, including representatives from 23 different South Seattle community groups, overwhelmed a City Council Transportation subcommittee meeting with a well-orchestrated, two-hour presentation. Police and fire officials testified that the loss of the bridge would mean increased emergency response times and strongly endorsed the replacement option. (4) The LSBC presented George Benson, chair of the City Council;s Transportation Committee, with a petition supporting the rebuild signed by more than 2,300 residents. “I’ve never felt a though I stood at the end of a cannon barrel before, but I feel that way now," said the railroad’s consultant when he went before the crowd to present his firm’s findings. Amidst a chorus of catcalls, he explained to them that “The bridge is strongly needed from a sociological standpoint and a pedestrian and bicycle standpoint, but from a technical, cost-benefit standpoint, it’s not feasible to replace it.”(5) Bob Medina, an LSBC leader, read the railroad’s recommendation and asked the crowd to vote by show of hands whether they favored it. Not one hand went up. He then asked for a vote on the replacement proposal that his group had prepared. Every hand in the room was raised except those of representatives of the railroads, the Engineering Department, and Transportation. Medina turned to Councilman Benson and asked if he would support it. Benson struggled to answer and Medina was happy to help: “A simple ‘yes’ will do!” (6) That “yes” came less than a month later when in 1977 the City Council passed a resolution requiring the railroads to made federal money to build a new bridge built for vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The residents of Georgetown had won. The day before the council vote, the activists held a press conference in Councilman Benson’s office where they presented him with a rusty nail from the bridge and a note that read: “This paperweight was found lying under the bridge and testifies to the deteriorated condition of the 73 year old temporary structure. We hope that you will place it on top of the other issues on your desk.” (7) The estimated completion date was September 1979. The project was now in the hands of the city, state, and federal bureaucracies, each with its own interests and “proper channels.” By September, the city Engineering Department had not, as promised, signed agreements with the railroad and with the consultant for the preliminary design of the bridge. They said they needed more time. (8) On October 6, the Lucile Street Bridge Committee called the television stations down to South Seattle and staged an inspection of the old bridge. They sent a report detailing the needed repairs to the Engineering Department, which were made in a month. The Bridge Committee called its own unofficial public hearing on October 13, which was attended by 150 people along with councilman Benson and two city engineers. The program included a skit entitled “The Snails” about the pace of officials in the building of the new bridge. Organizers presented the city engineers with “The Fast Mover Award.” A ceramic snail mounted on a trophy pedestal, to take to their boss.”(9) As relentless as the residents could be, city officials saw in them a credible partner in the bridge project. Facing difficult choices during the design phase, the Engineering department put the decision to the LSBC, who ultimately voted to wait a little longer for their preferred design—a wider roadway with bigger sidewalks. (10) At the end of April, 1980, two weeks before the bridge project was to be sent out for bed, the city announced that, due to a cut in federal highway funds, construction would be delayed indefinitely. In May of 1980, the Seattle Times ran an Op Ed titled “City Hall Breaks Promise, Shuns South End (Again).”(11) Mayer Royer and several city council members responded with their own Op Ed, which closed with the emphatic statement: “The Lucille Street Bridge will be built.” (12) On the evening of July 16,1982, residents of Georgetown were joined by Mayor Royer and a delegation of city council members and residents for the ribbon cutting at the intersection of Airport Way South and Corson Avenue South. Echoing the original demonstration six years earlier that kicked off their campaign, the neighbors marched from the top to the bottom of their new bridge. The new Lucile Street Bridge was built for $2.8 million with the federal government paying 80 percent, the railroads paying the remainder, and the city responsible for ongoing maintenance costs. Fair from a piece of anonymous infrastructure, the residents of Georgetown viewed the bridge as a vital feature of their neighborhood and had taken a stand in deciding its future. If there is a lesson in the Lucille Street Bridge campaign, it is that petitioning powerful institutions is not enough. The vast majority of Lucile Street Bridge Committee’s work came after the emotional climax of the city and the railroads reversing their original plan and agreeing to replace the bridge. Were it not for the five years of vigilance that came after the original agreement to rebuild—letter-writing campaigns, meetings, press events, marches--- the Lucile Street Bridge would likely not exist today. This model of local initiative and government-citizen participation was institutionalized in Seattle when Jim Diers, who had stood with the residents of Georgetown, became the first Director of the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods in 1988. This project was completed in 2011 and was founded by a special project grant from King County 4Culture Jim Diers, SESCO Newsletter, Volume 1976 #7, pg4 Letter to supporters of the Lucile Street Bridge Committee, law Nov, 1976 Jim Diers, e-mail, 5/3/2011 Seattle Times, “Rally in Support of new Lucile St. Bridge set,” 11/3/76 “Community Turns out for Lucile St. Bridge,: SDJ 11/10/76 SESCO newsletter, 12/15/76 SESCO newsletter, January 27, Vol.1977 #1 SESCO newsletter, 9/16, 1977, volume 1977, Number 7 SESCO newsletter, Nov 3, 1977- Vol1977 Number 8 Seattle Times, "Community Panel Resolves Lucile Street span question,” 4/7/79 Seattle Times, "City Hall Breaks Promise, Suns South End (Again),” 5/2/1980 Seattle Times, “Lucile Street Bridge is Coming,” 6/6/1980

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