Clustered around the north end of the Broadway business district are a host of historic buildings called collectively the Harvard-Belmont Landmark District. Many of these buildings are still in active use, including the Harvard Exit Theater, the Loveless Studio Building and the Deluxe Bar and Grill.
Nestled into the basement under the Deluxe, across the street from the former Elite Tavern, is the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries. We had an opportunity on a Friday evening recently to participate in one of the Museum's "lock-in" events and learned from co-director Charlette LeFevre just how one might go about looking for a ghost.
Charlette began by suggesting that the first thing to do when seeking a possible ghost was to get to know the building itself and some of its history. And this corner has quite a history!
During the 1920s and '30s, the Women's Century Club - now the Harvard Exit - was a rallying place for many activities by local women bent on civilizing this new city. Visitors to the Club were luminaries from a wide range of women's interests, from music and theater to politics. Berthe Landis, Seattle's first and only woman mayor (1926-1928), was a regular visitor. Charlette took us on a tour of the "underground" of their building and pointed out the shared walls with the Women's Century Club. While the club sold its building decades ago, it continues to meet there and the current owners continue to keep the first floor lobby in much the same décor as the original.
Across the street, local women gathered to honor the founding of the United States and created a replica of George Washington's home at Mount Vernon. The local Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) continue to meet and honor that tradition in the pillared building with the lovely steps leading to East Roy Street. Some people report seeing a ghostly woman on those steps.
And on the northwest corner of East Roy Street and Harvard Avenue East, the Music and Art Foundation built a new school for Nellie Cornish, who founded The Cornish School in 1914. Nellie lived in the new school from the time it opened in 1921 until she left Seattle in 1939. Cornish attracted talented music, art and drama students and teachers from all over the world, including James Burton and Florence Bean James, who went on to found what has become the University Playhouse Theater. Their theater was designed by Arthur B. Loveless who was the architect for, and lived in, the Loveless Studio Building across the street from the Harvard Exit. Loveless also designed the original building where the Deluxe and the Museum of Mysteries is located, and parts of the foundation still exist underground.
Imagine this off-Broadway scene 80 and 90 yeas ago: a host of Seattle's women, with their children perhaps playing in the yard, meeting, visiting, speaking, hosting dramatic and dance events and working together to clean up city government. These women had been successful in gaining the right to vote in 1910 and were also successful in helping to enact Prohibition, ratified by Washington voters in 1914.
Prohibition began officially on January 1, 1916, and lasted until 1933. In many ways the slogan that the 20th century would be the Women's Century seemed to be coming true.
So what was happening in the basement of the next door? The current Deluxe building, and probably it's predecessor, likely housed storage for bootleggers while it served the neighborhood as a grocery. Perhaps the men waiting for their wives and sisters, nipped around the corner for a drink? Bootlegging was big business in Seattle. Politics at the time was a kind of war between the bootlegging interests and civic interests.
In this context, one can imagine that there might still be ghosts lingering in the afterglow of such lively times. At the Museum of the Mysteries, we learned a bit about ghosts who have been sighted, were offered an opportunity to use the tools of ghost hunting, played a game of ghost poker and generally speculated together about who the ghosts might be that seem to appear in the area.
Walking home in the dark after a fine introduction to ghosts, my granddaughter asked, "Do you have to believe in ghosts to look for them?"
I gather that it's not so much a question of believing as it is a question of acknowledging that ghosts might appear, and maybe even move the barstools around at the Deluxe after hours.
If you know anything about railroad certificates, do get in touch with Charlette. I think we'll next take the Capitol Hill Ghost Walk offered by the museum.
The Museum of the Mysteries is at 623 Broadway E., 328-6499.
[[In-content Ad]]
