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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.

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.

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

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

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

We have completed a project researching and documenting the history of community activism in the Rainier Valley. We were interested in tracing the roots of our current community issues and organizations back to the 1970s. Mikala Woodward and John Hoole dug through information at Municipal Archives, the Seattle Public Library, and in a marvelous collection of documents and slides donated by Rodney Herold, co-founder of SESCO (South End Seattle Community Organization). They recorded oral history interviews with activists, government officials, and other participants in the events of the era. These interviews, along with any photos and documents they uncover, will be added to the RVHS’s collection for future researchers. See stories from this project below: Lessons In Civic Activism: Greenwood Gardens A Concrete Problem: SESCO and the Principle of Escalation Schoolyard Standoffs: The Tale of Whitworth Elementary How to Build a Bridge The Rainier Chamber’s Crime Fighting Spree: Harnessing Social Capital “Everybody In” packs it in

Community organizing starts with problems—a rat infested apartment, the steady drip drip from the ceiling of an elementary school after a storm, an intersection with no stop might where a car hits somebody’s daughter. By the time the Southeast Seattle Community Organization (SESCO) set up shop in the summer of 1975, many Rainier Valley residents were fed up with all the little problems and had come to the conclusion that they were the victims of the city’s neglect or worse, of a deliberate plan to dump Seattle’s problems in the South End. The complaint was common, but vague; it unhelpfully pointed the finger at the city’s entire political establishment and suggested no action. As pioneering community organizer, Saul Alinsky put it, “What the organizer does is convert the plight into a problem.” Trained in Alinsky’s methods, SESCO’s community organizations sought to overcome feelings of isolation and helplessness by mobilizing people around a modest issue that was concrete, specific and realizable. In a pivotal early organizing effort, SESCO hit upon one of those little issues that was symbolic of southeast Seattle’s plight and literally concrete. Residents of the Dunlap neighborhood noticed a steadily growing pile of construction rubble behind their houses. The nuisance became intolerable when one day in February of 1976, it rained the sheet built of the mount diverted enough rainwater to flood their basements. The dumping was originally intended as a fill for the site of a future church whose congregation at the time met at a house on the same property. The pile, which stood at 17 feet and was made up of dirt, large slaves of concrete and settle support rods, contained ten times more debris than the city-issued dumping permit allowed. With the help of the SESCO organization, the first thing the neighbors did was arrange a meeting with the official from the city Building Department, which had issued the dumping permit. The official told them he would investigate, by that they should really be taking the matter up with the property owner who was ultimately responsible. Church officials said they had asked their contractor repeatedly to stop the dumping. The residents contacted the contractor, who said he had nothing to do with the landfill and that he was “not about the to be city’s fall guy on this deal.” (1) This dizzying circle of deferred responsibility is very often the point where people like that Dunlap residents give up. Alinsky observed in his book Rules for Radicals that “in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a constant and somewhat legitimate, passing of the buck.” He directed community activists to pick a specific target as responsible and “freeze” it, relentlessly holding them alone accountable. The residents of Dunlap chose the superintendent of the city Building Department, a man with the unfortunate name of Mr. Petty. Twenty-five of them made a trip to his office and presented for his signature a document stating that the debris would be removed within a month. He demurred, stating that “any action on the matter would have to come about through court proceedings.” It looks like someone erred, “he told the Southeast District Journal, which had been called there for the occasion, and speculated that his department not intervening to stop the dumping “might have been an honest mistake.”(2) The Building Department’s idea of action was to issue a succession of stop work orders, which went ignored since nobody would admit to dumping at the site. Faced with continuing pressure for his department to clean up the site, Petty protested, “We’re supposed to go through the proper channels. We’ll only take it out if there are no other choices. It’s the responsibility of the property owner.” (3) In delivering what was no doubt his department’s boilerplate evasion, the superintendent inadvertently spelled out the newly minted neighborhood activist’s end game – to make it clear that there would be no choice Petty could stomach but to clean up the site. On Wednesday, April 28th, 1976, Residents and organizers loaded a pickup truck at the dump site and made a trip north to City Hall. They unloaded their cargo—a concrete slab which was estimated to weigh three tons and twisted 20 foot- long steel support rod—at the entrance to the Building Department’s office and labeled them with the specification of the fill material allowed by the city permit “8 inch piece of dirt.” Though Petty was still out to lunch when the activists arrived (until 2:15 p.m., the Seattle Times noted)., two of his representatives read a statement recounting the city’s efforts to address the complaints. One city employee noted down the names of the activists “in case there is some liability for removing the material,” he said. (4) Before they left, the Dunlap residents handed out a press release warning that, until the city cleaned up the dump, they would return with more of its contents. The simmering conviction that the city was using their community as a place to hide Seattle’s problems became real in the chunks of concrete, and now, with the help of SESCO, the community was rubbing the political establishment’s nose in the mess they refused to acknowledge. City Hall had become the dumping ground. Petty and other officials involved with the dumping issue took comfort that they were following the correct process, regardless of the result. Convinced that they had acted correctly, they were able to address the residents from a professional distance. The residents of Dunlap, who lived with the growing landfill in their backyards, were only concerned with results, which they intended to get. As recounted in SESCO’s newsletter, “The residents visited Mr. Betty at this home. There he refused to talk with they, so they visited his neighbors to tell them how he ran his department.” (5) Rodney Herold, who was SESCO’s director at the time, described the chain of events that led to the visit of the superintendent’s home as the “principle of escalation.” “People are reticent to get involved and do things,” he said, “So first they write a letter and nothing happens and they get frustrated, so they make a call. If nothing happens then, they go to the person’s workplace. And if that doesn’t work, we certainly went to people’s homes a couple of times.” (6) The principle of escalation, fed by intransigence and frustration is the motor of community organizing. It turns detached authorities into personal targets and anonymous citizens into committed activists. Someone must have told the mayor what SESCO was up to because, a few days later, one of the Dunlap residents received a call from his office conceding that the city would take care of the problem. The next week Mayor Uhlman, who was making a bid for governor, personally visited Dunlap to assure the residents the debris would be removed at the expense of the city and the contractor. SESCO organizers went on to build “action groups” around a number of other issues with names like Concerned Residents of Holly Park, Georgetown Community Against the Animal Shelton, and the Bolmor/Jacobus Committee. From these issue-specific groups, SESCO built a coalition of community groups made up of everyday residents who were ready to tackle issues that affected the entire Rainier Valley, such as housing segregation and real estate redlining. Seattle Post Intelligencer, Everybody Dumps: Problem of Fill,” 3/24/76 South District Journal, “City Action South in Landfill Conflict,” 3/31/76 South District Journal, “Residents Rock City Hall,” 5/3/76 Seattle Times, “Protestors Leave Big Calling Card,” 4/29/76 SESCO Staff Reports and the Northwest Institute Report, Volume 1976, No.6 In person interview, 11/17/09

2010 marks the 100th year of operation for the Lakewood Seward Park Community Club Take a look at the Seward Park peninsula today and imagine what the terrain across Andrews Bay looked like 120 years ago. The woods along the west side of Lake Washington between Hudson Street on the south and what is now the Stan Sayres Pits, and bounded by 42nd Avenue on the west, formed a triangular piece of land called Lakewood. Guy Phinney, a wealthy lumber mill owner, purchased and platted Lakewood in 1883. By 1903, the area was booming thanks largely to proximity to the Southern Railway which ran through neighboring Columbia City. It wasn’t long before the “clearings in the wilderness” were sold and pioneers from Canada, England, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, as well as the U.S. Midwest began removing trees for their new homes. It soon became clear that road and trail improvements were of utmost concern. Few Lakewood residents owned automobiles at the turn of the century, and walking or traveling by cart and horse over the hill to the city, especially at night, was less than desirable. Transportation issues spurred the organization of an improvement club. Canadian real estate broker named Albert George Corbett presided over the first meeting of the male-only Lakewood Improvement Club in 1910; meanwhile Henrietta McCloy called to order the first meeting of 30 women, the Lakewood Civic Improvement Club. The groups met twice monthly; the women in the parlor of the McCloy home, and the men in a chicken coop and the Lakewood boathouse. Civic improvements included the installation of three plank sidewalks( instead of the standard two) to accommodate young families with baby carriages, the 48th Street overpass that crossed Genesee Street, and the grading of Genesee Street in 1912. A major success was the campaign to install a shuttle streetcar line for Lakewood residents -- the Genesee streetcar named the “Galloping Goose” ran on a one- track line from Hudson along 50th to Genesee and Rainier Avenue and back again. Civic improvements were just one aspect of the clubs’ goals. Having a social and meeting hall to host a variety of occasions was another. To that end, the “Lakewood Club House Company” sold $5.00 shares of stock to purchase land and building materials. With volunteer power from the Lakewood and Genesee Boat Club members, the first clubhouse in Seattle was built in 1914 on 50th and Angeline Street. In 1929, the name of the club changed to the Lakewood Community Club to include both the men’s and women’s groups. The mission statement “To unite all those whose homes and interests are in this vicinity and to work together for the development and common welfare of the community” still holds today. Seward Park neighbors joined this effort in 1979, consolidating the two neighborhoods of 6,700 residents, and the club name became the Lakewood Seward Park Community Club. Over the past 100 years, the Club has served the welfare of its community. It has provided a meeting space for hundreds of organizations and events, including Scouts, Little League, Food Co-Op, and Candidates Night, as well as private groups. Regular events hosted by members, such as the monthly dances, the New Year’s Eve Ball, picnics, potlucks, bingo, bazaars, are remembered by many. In the past year, neighbors have secured the continuation of the Cub for the next generation through a membership drive, the refurbishment of the clubhouse, and official adoption of not-for-profit 501(c)(3) status.

In the 2008-09 school year, fifty 6th grade students from the New School explored the rich tapestry of faith traditions in the Rainier Valley. They visited houses of worship, interviewed faith leaders, took photos and video, and wrote of their experiences. The project, Bringing World Religion Home, was a collaboration of the Rainier Valley Historical Society and teachers at the New School. Funding was provided by a Heritage Cultural Education grant from King County 4Culture. Bringing World Religion Home became a part of a larger curriculum piece designed by New School teacher Chris Quigley on World Religions and Spirituality. In the classroom, students learned about monotheism and animism, reincarnation, and evangelism -- the basic beliefs and historical origins of different faith traditions. Their field trips into the community allowed them to experience different religions as practiced by real people, to see how traditions from far away have been adapted in a new home, and to hear about each faith group's hope for the future. Watch this space for stories and slide shows from the project. Disclaimer! Please note that the stories here reflect the children's experience of individual congregations or groups. We recognize that there are many differences and nuances even within a single religion. Click here for the World Religions and Spirituality Curriculum Guide. The Jewish Tradition Catholic Tradition in the Valley Field Trip to Temple Chua Duoc Su

This exhibit was created in 2009 in conjunction with the Washington State History Society's Exhibit, "Women's Votes, Women's Voices". Rainier Valley Historical Society celebrates Rainier Valley's many women leaders and their varied avenues of public life and commitment to improving their communities and beyond. Exhibit Author: Mikala Woodward Explore the digital exhibit here: Beyond the Laundry: Women Changing the World Working for Change Without the Vote Mother's Clubs Lead the Way Marion Southard Weiss

This photo essay was created by Eleanor Boba Early Beginnings In the beginning, baseball was everywhere. Nowadays when we think about baseball, we think of major league teams, big stadiums, and all the trappings of a nationwide organized sport. In Seattle, minor leagues arrived in 1890, but before that, and for a long while after, neighborhood teams like these Hillman City players duked it out all over the city. Bill Phalen: Civic Leader with a Passion for the Game Bill Phalen arrived in Columbia City in 1900 and opened a grocery store on the ground floor of the Knights of Pythias Hall. Soon he became a community leader, with a hand in everything from the Volunteer Fire Department to the annual Rainier Valley Fiesta. One of his passions was baseball -- he had played professionally back in the Midwest -- and he was the founder of the Rainier Valley Athletic Club, which fielded Columbia City's baseball team. Childhood Champions Adults weren't the only ones playing ball, as this photograph of the Whitworth Elementary 1911 championship team shows. In the days before TV & video games -- or Little League -- every elementary school had a baseball team. Dugdale Park: Home of the Seattle Indians Daniel E. Dugdale arrived in Seattle in 1898, on his way to the Klondike Gold Rush. Fortunately, he decided to stay in the Queen City and establish professional baseball in Seattle. He was instrumental in founding the Pacific Northwest League in 1901, owned and operated the Seattle Northwestern League franchise through 1918, and built two ballparks in the city: Yesler Way Park in 1907 and Dugdale Park in 1913. Dugdale Park, the first double-decked baseball park on the West Coast, burned to the ground on July 4th, 1932 in a fire set by a local serial arsonist. Dugdale, who remained involved in local baseball, died in a traffic accident in 1934. "A fine new, thoroughly modern baseball park and the best baseball possible!" Such was the pledge of Emil Sick, the owner of the Rainier brewing company, who remade Seattle baseball in 1938. Dugdale Park had burned down in 1932, forcing the Indians to move out of the Rainier Valley to Civic Field. Sick bought the team, spending $25,000 for new players and $150,000 for a new stadium built on the old Dugdale site. At the time, minor league baseball was a good business investment and Colonel Jacob Ruppert (a fellow beer baron and close friend of Sick's) owned the New York Yankees. Poised for Victory The photo shows the Seattle Rainiers baseball team in 1939. This squad went on to win the first of three consecutive Pacific Coast League pennants for Seattle. A crude attempt has been made to paste in Hal Turpin, one of the team's ace pitchers who probably hadn't yet reported to Seattle from his farm in Yoncalla, Oregon, when the photo was taken (see back row, right). The Vacca Family farm is seen in the background of the photo. Support from Sal Vacca allowed us to acquire this image from the University of Washington. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, UW 15733. Fred Hutchinson: The Rainiers' Young Star One of the highlights of the 1938 Seattle baseball season, their first season as “Rainiers,” was local teenage pitching sensation Fred Hutchinson. Hutchinson was an all-around athlete at neighboring Franklin High, and captivated the city and entire West Coast with his spectacular first professional season in the fast Pacific Coast League. Hutch won 25 games and lost only 7, had a 2.48 ERA, and was named Sporting News Minor League Player of the Year. Among many highlights of the season was Hutch winning his 19th game on his 19th birthday before an overflow crowd at Sick’s Stadium on August 12, 1938. Hutch was the hottest prospect in baseball during and after the 1938 season. His sale to the Detroit Tigers for $50,000 and four players, particularly outfielder Jo Jo White and first baseman George Archie, led to the Rainiers winning three straight Pacific Coast League pennants from 1939 to 1941. Baseball in the War Years "Americans all, we join together for Victory!" says this 1941 holiday card from the Rainiers. After winning three Pacific Coast League pennants in a row (1939, 1940, 1941) the Rainiers were riding a new wave of popularity. That April, 15,300 fans poured into Sick's Stadium to watch the Rainiers battle the Sacramento Solons. The US had entered WWII, and rubber (a necessity for the war) was scarce. Sick's stadium held Rubber Nights where kids could get in free if they brought in old tires. There were often more people in uniform, sometimes cheering for the other team! The Neighborhood behind the scoreboard This 1946 view of the Rainiers scoreboard shows the Mount Baker neighborhood just over the fence, with Franklin High School at right. For those who lived in the neighborhood, Sicks Stadium was a source of employment, entertainment -- and random fly balls. The Vacca family farm just up the hill from the stadium provided free seating -- the beanfield was known as "Cheapskate Hill" by many. Vacca kids earned money parking cars and cleaning up, and often made friends with the players, who would stop by the family's produce stand for vegetables. Sick's Stadium and the Rainier Valley in 1953 In this aerial photo we see a more rural, less developed Rainier Avenue -- open fields and sparse residential surround the imposing structure of Sick's Stadium. All that open space was ideal for parking. The Vacca's beanfield to the left of the stadium was known as "Cheapskate Hill" because people would sit there and watch the games for free over the stadium wall. The Vaccas were part of Rainier Valley's early Italian community -- known as "Garlic Gulch" -- centered around Atlantic Street just north of the stadium. Dick "Kewpie" Barrett: Pitcher... Insurance Salesman... Late for Dinner Dick Barrett was one of the Rainiers' best pitchers, known for his chubby cheeks, cheery demeanor, and uncanny ability to successfully close a game. In the off-season he sold insurance out of his home, and even threatened to do so permanently in 1941 during an argument over his contract. Many, if not most minor league players also had off-season jobs. Barrett, like many of the players, became friends with the neighborhood families over the years and frequently came to dinner at the Vacca home -- on one such occasion he was unusually late -- Mrs. Vacca waited and waited, heating and reheating her famous meatballs, until Barrett finally showed up to eat. She forgave him when he explained that he'd pitched a perfect game, and had been swamped by reporters after the final out. Leo Lassen: The Voice of the Rainiers Leo Lassen, Rainier Valley native, was the Rainiers' beloved announcer from 1931 - 1958. His colorful language and infectious enthusiasm earned him a place in Rainiers history. Changing Neighborhood By 1969 the neighborhood around Sicks Stadium had changed a great deal -- note that "Cheapskate Hill" has been replaced by the Mount Baker Village Apartments, an affordable housing development. The streetcar line that originally brought fans to the stadium was taken out in 1937, replaced with buses along Rainier Avenue. Farewell to Sicks Stadium Declining crowds at Rainiers games in the 60's are blamed on a number of factors, from the growing popularity of televised major league games, to the decline of the minor leagues as a separate independent system, to the Dodgers and Giants teams moving to the West Coast.The first bill to secure a bond to build a new stadium was proposed in 1960, but it took more than a decade to finally pass the measure and build the Kingdome. The new stadium was completed in 1976, just in time for the Mariners' first season the following year. Sick's wasn't demolished until 1979. The Hillman City Hellcats, 2007 Dugdale Park and Sick's Stadium are memories now, but baseball continues to be enjoyed in the Rainier Valley. Today Valley residents take Sound Transit's Link Light Rail downtown to watch the Mariners play at Safeco Field, instead of riding the streetcar to Sicks Stadium in their own neighborhood. The Rainier Little League is alive and well, and neighborhood teams like the Hillman City Hellcats, a co-ed softball team, continue the tradition of whacking balls with bats in the Rainier Valley. Rainier Little League, 2024 The below photo was taken at the celebrations following the ribbon cutting of the renovated Rainier Playfield on March 23, 2024. Through the generous support of the Mariner’s MLB All-Star Legacy initiative, both the baseball and softball fields at Rainier Playfield, located at 3700 S. Alaska St., have undergone extensive renovations. This collaborative effort has resulted in an upgraded facility catering to high school varsity baseball and softball teams, as well as local youth leagues. Moreover, it aims to break down barriers to play equity, particularly for youth from diverse and low-income backgrounds, by providing increased access to quality sports facilities. Additionally, the fields will serve as venues for skills clinics and middle school programming, fostering community engagement and athletic development.

In the spring of 2005, a group of fourth and fifth graders at Orca @ Columbia School researched the history of the stream that used to run through Columbia City, and shared their findings with the community. The project began with rumors of a creek that used to run through Columbia City. Students in Ms. Katherine Law's class at Orca School were curious: Where was the stream, exactly? What did it look like? Where did it go? With the help of RVHS Director Mikala Woodward, they set out to find some answers. First they analyzed historic maps of Columbia City from the RVHS Collection and the Washington State University Library’s digital collection. The maps were incomplete and confusing: the street names had changed; the shoreline of Lake Washington had moved; Rainier Avenue had been realigned. Only one map even showed the historic stream. But the class worked out a way to transfer information from the old maps to the current map, using the few landmarks that had not changed. Eventually they were able to locate the path of the original stream, learning about cartographic concepts such as orientation and scale along the way. The class then took a walk through the neighborhood looking for physical evidence of the stream, following its path from Hitt’s Hill, across the schoolyard, through Columbia Park, and on toward Lake Washington. They identified some low-lying, swampy areas, some areas that had clearly been filled in, and several storm drains that seemed to follow the path of the stream. Ms. Woodward then brought in letters and documents from the Seattle City Archives relating to the fate of the stream in Columbia Park. These documents were difficult to make sense of – difficult to even read, at times, with their spidery handwriting – but the students pulled out important pieces of information from each document. They put all the facts they had gleaned on a big timeline, and a story began to emerge about the history of Columbia Park and the stream. Finally, the students made their work public. They invited Kim Baldwin, a landscape architect from the Seattle Parks Department, to come to their class to discuss ways to commemorate the stream in Columbia Park. They created a temporary installation of blue irrigation flags in the grass through Columbia Park, and a display and illustrated handout to explain the flags. The installation was up on a Wednesday, during the Columbia City Farmers Market, which is adjacent to the park. Hundreds of people saw it up close, and thousands more saw it from Rainier Avenue as they drove by. Due in part to the efforts of this class, the Seattle Parks Department incorporated the path of the historic stream into a Pro Parks improvement project for Columbia Park.  A “sinuous concrete path” now meanders through the park, with a plaque at each end explaining that the path follows the course of the historic stream. Softly glowing solar-powered blue tiles are embedded in the path, making the stream visible at night too. This project taught the students a lot about their hidden stream. But more importantly, they learned that history is, in part, a creative art. History isn’t just a series of objective facts out there, waiting to be uncovered. Historians have to put together coherent stories based on incomplete and conflicting information, using imagination and guesswork. The students also learned that sharing those stories with the rest of the community is an important part of the process. Their work will have a lasting impact on the neighborhood. The commemoration of the stream in Columbia Park will educate Columbia City neighbors for years to come, giving them a glimpse of the landscape of the past. The "Hidden Stream of Columbia City" won the 2006 Heritage Education Award from the Association of King County Heritage Organizations.