Washington Hall
Brick fraternal lodge and boarding house that became a landmark jazz and community stage for over a century.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Washington Hall in Seattle follows the $22,225 bill that Danish immigrants paid in nickels and dimes to build their own lodge in 1908, hiring contractor Hans Pederson before he went on to raise the Arctic Building and the King County Courthouse. It traces the boarding rooms tucked behind the dance floor, cheap beds for newcomers with a trunk, a few words of English and nowhere else to sleep. Look up at the parapet on Fourteenth and Fir, where the same name and date greeted them then.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Wing Luke Museum
Restored immigrant hotel and family-association rooms inside a nineteen-ten Chinatown building, now a community history museum.
The Showbox
Nineteen-thirties Art Moderne music hall saved from demolition by a landmark fight that made national headlines.
Panama Hotel and Tea House
Five-story 1910 workingman's hotel with a preserved Japanese bathhouse and wartime storage room beneath a glass floor.
Moore Theatre
Vaudeville-era concert hall with a column-free balcony and a history it no longer hides.
National Nordic Museum
Purpose-built galleries tracing Nordic immigrant heritage on a historic Scandinavian fishing waterfront.
The Crocodile
Belltown club where a cafe, a liquor bar and a mosh-pit-sized stage share one storefront.