NOBODY LIVES HERE

Mobile Service Station (1962)

On one level, this is a story about how people get around, and how we shape and reshape our cities to accommodate different modes of transportation.

Before the arrival of the automobile in the early 20th century, people living and working in this area got around on foot or by streetcar. Horse-drawn vehicles carried people and goods as well. An electric streetcar ran up Jackson Street from King Street Station, and another streetcar along Dearborn St. connected downtown Seattle to the Rainier Valley.

As cars became more affordable and reliable, more people opted for the freedom and convenience they promised. In the years after WWII, the city was rebuilt to serve the needs of automobiles, and other transportation choices suffered.

  _{Mobile Station operated by Harry T. Chin at 8th and Jackson Street, 1962. Photo: Washington State Department of Transportation} 

The Charity Organization Society (1901)

Long before the freeway was built, this landscape was dramatically reshaped by the Jackson Street Regrade. Prior to the regrade the area south of Yesler – called “The Sawdust” or “The Tenderloin” – was known primarily for poverty and vice. It was also the only place where Native Americans and Chinese immigrants were permitted to live. The 1908 regrade, touted as an opportunity to increase property values, flattened 29 square blocks of hilly terrain, and created 27 square blocks of filled-in mudflats. Every building in this 1891 photograph was moved or demolished, including the steepled Holy Names Academy, a Catholic girls school now located on Capitol Hill.

The Charity Organization Society operated out of 820 S. Jackson, channeling the good intentions of Seattle’s wealthy white residents into Progressive Era services for ‘the poor.”  A “Hall for Young Men” invited at-risk youth "to spend their evenings in these warm, well lighted rooms instead of on the streets or at low resorts.” By day the Society offered childcare to poor mothers, who could "leave children during working hours, under supervision of prominent ladies of Seattle” (whose own children were perhaps being cared for by low-wage working women?). Baby clothes were also donated: "Individuals or sewing societies who would like to provide a maternity bag for some poor woman" were asked to contact the office.

 _PHOTOS 

 _{1. Looking south across 9th and Jackson Street toward Beacon Hill, c 1891. The Charity Organization Society operated out of one of the buildings facing the school. Photo: Seattle Public Library} 

 _{1. Looking south across 9th and Jackson Street toward Beacon Hill, 2023. Photo: Mikala Woodward} 

 _{1. Hall for Young Men, 1901. The Seattle Times} 

Tacoma Hotel (1930s)

Racist U.S. immigration laws set up different restrictions and opportunities for various Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the early 20th century. The Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907 allowed Japanese women to enter the country, often as “picture brides.” Thus, unlike their Chinese and Filipino counterparts, many Japanese immigrants were able to start families – and in turn, family businesses such as farms, groceries, and hotels. And with American-born children who could legally own property, it was possible for some Japanese families to begin to build wealth, in ways that were harder for other communities. This relative privilege did not protect them from discrimination, of course – during WWII many Japanese American families would lose everything they had worked so hard to build.

Seiichi Hara came to the U.S. in 1906, and brought his wife Shizuko Inagaki to Seattle in 1918. The Haras raised four children while managing the Tacoma Hotel at 822 S. Jackson. Seiichi spoke English well, and served as an interpreter and liaison for other Japanese immigrants. He helped develop curriculum for the Japanese Language School, adapting texts from Japan to serve the needs of Japanese American children. In the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1942, Seiichi was detained by the FBI, along with many other Japanese community leaders. The Hara family spent WWII in the Minidoka incarceration camp in Idaho.

After the war, the Haras resumed managing the Tacoma Hotel, until the freeway took the building in 1962. According to their daughter Amy, the Haras were ready to retire from the hotel business by then.

 _{The Tacoma Hotel c. 1938 and c. 1962. Photos: Wing Luke Museum Collection} 

Jackson Street Community Council (1946)

The Jackson Street Community Council, founded in 1946, had an office at 826 Jackson, in the Tacoma Hotel building. By 1951 it boasted that its membership encompassed “four languages, five cultural groups, the gamut from rich man to poor man, customs as different as centuries of tradition on opposite sides of the globe.” Their accomplishments included neighborhood rubbish removal, street lighting, mobile health care services, multi-cultural art events, youth activities, and more.

The JSCC would play a major role in organizing the community’s response when the freeway plans were announced in 1952. In 1954 they held a public meeting to share the proposed route and discuss its potential impacts. Later that year they issued a report that detailed the businesses and residences that would be lost, as well as likely effects on traffic patterns in the area. The report's conclusion called for "an over-all community plan which would determine the constructive measures necessary to capitalize on the beneficial aspects of the freeway and to overcome its detrimental effects."

Community pressure succeeded in preserving King Street as a route under the freeway (the original plans called for it to be buried, along with Washington, Main, Weller, and Lane). But the detrimental effects of the freeway could not be overcome.

 _{JSCC members Yoshito Fujii, Tollie Green, Lew Kay, and T.A. Allasina , 1947. Photo: JSCC/Wing Luke Museum} 

 _{"Which Block Must Go?", 1954 Photo: JSCC/Wing Luke Museum} 

Jackson Street Retaining Wall (1948)

The 1908 Jackson Street Regrade left an unstable hillside north of Jackson, and repeated mudslides in the 1920s and '30s threatened the Tacoma Hotel and other properties. In 1948, pressured by the newly-formed Jackson Street Community Council, the city’s Engineering Department built a massive retaining wall using repurposed train rails that still stands today.

A community mural will be painted along the wall in 2023. The mural is part of a project led by InterIm Commuinty Development Authority to redevelop the area under I-5 as a community space.  

 _{Landslide and retaining wall at 10th and Jackson, 1948. The Tacoma Hotel is visible at 8th and Jackson. Photos: Seattle Municipal Archives} 

Art Louie's Sporting Goods (1950s)

Why did you get out of the sporting goods business?

Two reasons. One was that I felt I could make more money in the restaurant business. And the second thing was that they were building the freeway. I had to move. So I decided to go into the restaurant business. 

Did they compensate you for the loss of the sporting goods store?

They didn’t compensate for anything. Seemed like they should have compensated, but we never got anything. That was a long time ago. We never thought about asking about it. 

-- Art Louie, in a 1990 interview

Art Louie was born in Seattle in 1918, the third son of successful restaurateur Charles Louie. He played basketball at Garfield High School, and studied business at UW before serving in the Navy during WWII,. After the war, Art and two friends started a sporting goods business at 815 S. Jackson. Art ran the store until the freeway came through in 1961, and then opened a restaurant at 421 7th Ave. A 1963 Seattle Times profile described Louie as "urbane and sophisticated," part of a transition from "austere and humble Chinese restaurants" to "smart and popular atmosphere-type eating houses." Louie would own two restaurants of his own before moving on to manage his brother George's iconic Ballard restaurant, Louie’s Cuisine of China (which closed in 2014). In his later years Art became an abstract painter. He passed away in 2005.

Art Louie’s Sporting Goods operated out of a building that housed many small businesses, including a frame shop, an aquarium supply shop, and Art's brother's dental office. The state assessor offered the owner of the property $34,000 in "just compensation," but tenants renting space in the building were not compensated.

 _{811-821 S. Jackson Street, c. 1962. Photo: Washington State Department of Transportation} 

 _{Art Louie, 1957. Photo: Wing Luke Museum} 

Gong's Aquarium (1947)

“The ceremonial red is out on King St. for a new Chinese store,” wrote Seattle Times columnist Frank Lynch in 1947. “T. J. Gong, the owner, built the [aquarium] tanks himself, long rows of them, lighted nicely, and filled with tropical fish and underwater plants.” Gong’s Aquarium sold tropical fish and aquarium supplies, and offered advice about caring for and breeding fish. The shop closed in 1962 when the freeway came through.

 _{Gong's Aquarium ad, 1950. The Seattle Times} 

Togo Furniture (1942)

Togo Furniture, located at 825 Jackson, was owned by the Okazaki family, who lived at 819 Weller Street (location #24 on this map).

Takaaki Okazaki, the eldest of the seven Okazaki children, was drafted in 1941. He was home on leave, helping get the furniture store ready for the Christmas season, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. When EO9066 was issued, sisters Kiyoko, Amy, and Miyoko oversaw the liquidation of the store’s stock before the family left for Minidoka. The youngest sister, Mary, was ten years old when she was photographed in front of the store's "Removal Sale" sign -- with another sign in the window explaining that Takaaki was serving in the Army.

The war years shattered and scattered the Okazaki family. Takaaki Okazaki was killed in France. His brother Frank was drafted and served in Italy. The older sisters left camp for school or jobs on the East Coast. Kazuo and Tatsu returned to their house on Weller after the war with just the two youngest children, Frank and Mary. They did not reopen the furniture store.

The building was taken over by Western Gear Co., a manufacturing plant that occupied much of the block between Jackson and King Streets. It was torn down for the freeway construction in the early 1960s.

Takaaki’s body was returned to Seattle in 1948 and buried in the Washelli cemetery, with the service conducted by the Nisei Veterans Committee.

  _{Togo Furniture, 1940. Courtesy of Okazaki Family}  

 _{"Removal Sale" at Togo Furniture, 1942. Mary Okazaki stands in front of a sign explaining that her brother Takaaki is serving in the Army, as his family prepares to be forcibly evacuated from the West Coast. The Seattle Times} 

 _{Takaaki Okazaki Laid to Rest, 1948. Northwest Times} 

 _{Takaaki Okazaki's funeral, 1948. Wing Luke Musuem} 

Cherry Land Florist (1940)

[My grandfather] and my grandmother founded Cherry Land Florists on Jackson Street. The store grew to cover a full block in a vibrant Asian business district. My mom and her siblings all had jobs in the store — and they even lived behind a tarp in the back. It was close quarters for a family driven to succeed, but they lost it all due to hateful stereotyping codified in government action.

-- Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, 2021

In 1931 Tameno Kobata, her husband John, and their eight children (six from her first marriage) opened a grocery store at 905 S. Jackson Street. They lived in the back of the shop, in a crowded space with water heated on the wood stove and blankets hung for privacy. The shop offered flowers for sale, displayed behind the vegetables; before long the flowers became the main business. By 1941, Cherry Land was a thriving florist shop that had taken over the whole building. After Pearl Harbor the business withered in the face of anti-Japanese sentiment, and in 1942 the family were incarcerated at Minidoka. The original business did not reopen after the war, though several of Tameno’s children went on to open flower shops of their own. In 1992 "Now and Then" columnist Paul Dorpat gathered a group of her descendants for a photo at the original location – under the I-5 freeway.

 _{Cherry Land Florist, 925 S. Jackson St., c. 1940. Densho, Seattle Buddhist Temple Archives Collection} 

 _{Kobata family in front of Cherry Land Florist, 925 S. Jackson St., c. 1941. Courtesy of Paul Dorpat} 

 _{Kobata descendants at former Cherry Land Florist site, 1992. Paul Dorpat} 

Cash Register (2020)

Matt Toles founded CID Community Watch in June of 2020, when COVID had shuttered the neighborhood and the community was reeling from anti-Asian attacks and the racial reckoning sparked by George Floyd's murder. Volunteers walked the neighborhood nightly, on the lookout for threatening behavior, or people needing support.

The south side and the north side [of the area under the freeway] always had very different vibe. On King Street, on the south side, it's very wide. And even though they put the pointy rocks down, people just put things over the rocks – this is not a very thought-out solution. So on King Street there were a lot of people, and the more people you have, the more there's a community. Whereas on the north side of Jackson, you just have the sidewalk, and then you have the cliff. Up up deep deep inside, there were people, but they were very, very well hidden. We never got to know anyone there.

So one night, on the north side of Jackson, we saw a cash register. I climbed over the fence, and I started poking around and looking inside it. We found a note that suggested it was from a Korean restaurant – I don't remember what restaurant it was; it was outside of Chinatown. There wasn't anything left inside it, and it was clearly completely broken. So we didn't do anything with it. And then a few days later, it was gone. 

This is the whole story – things just appear, and then eventually they disappear. You find this story on the ground – and then it just goes away. And maybe this is a good metaphor for the people that live there. Every person has a story. If you get to talk to them, they'll tell you the whole story. Or they'll tell you something: maybe it's true, maybe it's not, maybe it's based in reality, it doesn't matter. But then one day, they're just not there. The stories are somewhere else. Or maybe they're gone.

I don't know why I remember this cash register so much. It was just one of those things – like, Why is this here? How did this get here? No explanation – nothing. We'll never know what really happened. That's what it was like. You go back today, and there'll be different things. There'll be stories. But you probably won't hear the stories.

-- Matt Toles, founder of CID Community Watch

 _{Looking south from the "cliff" above Jackson, 2023. Photo: Mikala Woodward} 

Yesler Terrace (1940)

Did Dad's family go back to the neighborhood after WWII? They didn't have the house in the picture to return to because it was torn down to build Yesler Terrace. The family had lived at that address from about 1921-22 until that part of the neighborhood was cleared out for Yesler Terrace, which was completed in 1941. So, they lived there about 20 years before being "forced out" because of civic progress, and then were forced out of their rental on Hiawatha Place, near Rainier Avenue, because of WWII.

-- Mizu Sugimura, 2022 

Yesler Terrace is often touted as the first racially integrated housing project in the nation, but a closer look at the numbers tells a very different story. The site selected for Yesler Terrace was a neighborhood called Profanity Hill. Its population was predominantly Japanese, but it was also home to a high percentage of single mothers, male laborers, and interracial families. The new Yesler Terrace development only accepted married couples who were American citizens—which, at the time, excluded Asian immigrants. After displacing 127 Japanese families and a smaller cohort of Chinese, Japanese, Black and interracial households, Yesler Terrace opened with a “racially integrated” cohort that was almost entirely white.

 _{Aoyama family home at 1032 Main St., 1940.}  

 _{Views to the Southwest, South, and Southeast from 1032 Main St., 1940.}  

 _{Photos courtesy of Mizu Sugimura} 

NOTE: If you climb the stairs at 10th and Jackson and stand at the site of the Aoyama family home, you can compare the views captured by Mizu's family photos to what is visible today. Look for King Street Station to the West, and the PacMed Building (Marine Hospital) to the South. This is also the approximate location of the I-5 construction photo at the top of the StoryMap.

12th & Jackson (2023)

Before the Jackson Street Regrade, a rickety streetcar chugged up a 15% grade to get here from King Street Station, cresting a hill 50 feet above the level of today's freeway deck. Now Metro trolley buses and a new streetcar line climb a far gentler slope, vying for space with cars, cyclists, and pedestrians to reach this busy intersection. From here Jackson heads east to the historically Black Central Area. Twelfth Avenue leads south across the Jose Rizal Bridge to historically Asian American Beacon Hill, or north to the historically LGBT Capitol Hill neighborhood. Over the decades this intersection has been home to an iconic jazz club, a bustling Vietnamese grocery, and an open air drug market, among many other things. 

Today the building that once held the Black and Tan Club still stands on the SE corner. (A new venue with the same name is operating in Hillman City.) Little Saigon, built by Vietnamese refugees in the 1980s, faces displacement and gentrification pressures with the redevelopment of Yesler Terrace, and the economic and social fallouts from COVID have hit the community hard. But activists and advocates continue to work across generations and cultures to support local businesses, create public art and green spaces, and provide mutual aid to those in need. 

During the height of the pandemic and the racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, businesses across the CID were boarded up, and police presence in the community was both scarce and fraught. As the city’s housing crisis deepened, the encampments under the I-5 freeway grew. There were mental health impacts across multiple communities in the neighborhood. Social services were harder to access than ever. 

A number of mutual aid efforts emerged during this time, and several continue to this day.  CID Community Watch began walking the neighborhood nightly in June 2020. Tanya Woo says of those early months, “We mainly wanted to provide support to the community. We wanted to provide confidence, that we were there and we cared.” The group quickly developed strategies for intervening when problems arose, and for negotiating the complicated dynamics of calling 911 when additional help was needed. They also learned that taking the time to observe a situation, ask questions, and make connections with the people involved often meant that the answer was, “Don’t do anything.” 

"For example," says Matthew Toles, founder of CID Community Watch, "I was at 12th and Jackson one night and there is a kid, probably 7 or 8 years old. He’s just sort of wandering around, being a kid, spacing out, poking things, whatever.  I watch for a little bit, and he seems to be closest to one man. I take one of my guys to go [closer], and we’re just like, Hey, how’s it going? Just saying hi, giving out gloves and water. I say hi to the kid. The kid’s just being a kid, and he ignores me. I ask the guy, Is this your kid?  And he’s like, Yeah, that’s my kid. I ask the kid to make sure: Is this your dad? And he’s like, Yeah, that’s my dad. Well, it doesn’t look like the kid’s in any danger.  He looks fed and happy, and at least there is someone there watching him. I think a lot of people in that situation would have gone immediately to calling the police or child services."

Tanya Woo continues to lead walks in the neighborhood several evenings each week. "We try to do our small part. We have socks.  We have food and water. We have Narcan kits. We have first aid kits.  We talk to people. We go out under the freeway and we chat with some of our homeless residents there, and we get to know them. I know there’s a lot of issues that we can’t fully work on, but we are trying to support the community in ways that we can."  

Chu Minh Tofu owner Tanya Nguyen saw the need in the neighborhood and responded with generosity: "I see some people, because of some very small reason, they get caught. And they don’t know what to do to get out of that. I cannot do a lot, but what I know is I can cook. I can make food. So at least I can bring a little happiness for them. Maybe with that they can move on a bit. So that’s why I first thought about doing [free meals on Sundays]. The first Sunday we set up the table outside, and we started cooking and bringing food out. We started asking for people to come. I think we served on that day 50 people!” 

An active, inclusive community of volunteers called the Eggrolls has grown up to support Nguyen’s free Sunday meals, which continue to this day. Says Nguyen, “It’s like when you plant one seed, then you have a tree, one that’s beautiful with lots of flowers and fruit. That’s what I have. I give out one seed but I have in return so much love from people. I’m very grateful.”

 _{Black & Tan Club, 1937. Photo: Puget Sound Regional Archives} 

 _{12th & Jackson, 2023. The former Black & Tan Club building is in the foreground; Chu Minh Tofu is visible across 12th Ave. Photo: Mikala Woodward} 

 _{Tanya Nguyen, owner of Chu Minh Tofu, shares a "Free Meals" sign, 2022. Photo: Kathy Zamsky}  

"Houses" at 12th and King (1935)

My heart is bursting. In a moment we have lost all the value of our existence in this society. Not only have we lost our value, we’re unwanted. It would be better if we didn’t exist. Our spirits are being ground on a whetstone of anxiety. Little by little, our spirits are worn away.

– Kamekichi Tokita, writing in the weeks after Pearl Harbor

Kamekichi Tokita immigrated from Japan in 1919 from Japan, and settled quickly into Seattle’s bustling Nihonmachi. He found work as a sign painter, joining Kenji Nomura as a partner in the Noto Sign Co. (it’s quite likely that they painted signage for some of the businesses featured on this tour). The two painters also joined a small community of Japanese immigrant artists who were gaining recognition in the local art scene. Many of Tokita's urban landscapes depicted the neighborhood he lived and worked in.

Tokita married Haruko Suzuki in 1932, and for a time they lived in an apartment at 14th and Weller – just down the hill from the intersection in this 1935 painting, titled “Houses.” By 1940 the couple were living in and managing the Cadillac Hotel at 2nd and Jackson, with Kamekachi continuing to paint commercial signs for extra income. Between these activities and his growing family – four kids in 1940, with four more to come – Kamekichi had little time for oil painting.  

When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, Kamekichi Tokita began keeping a diary, recording the uncertainty, anxiety, and pain he and others in the Japanese American community were experiencing, as hostility against them increased and the government began planning for their forced removal from the West Coast. The Tokita family spent the war years at Minikoka, and returned to Seattle in 1945 with seven children and only $500 to their name. Kamekichi fell ill after the war and died in 1948. Haruko built up a new hotel business and raised their eight children on her own.

[Add Maxine Loo story: she grew up in neighborhood, lived in this house. Dad had poultry businesses on Maynard Alley. Childhood memory of family wearing "I Am Chinese" buttons during WWII so people would know they weren't Japanese.]

ALSO: From here you can see the Victorian Row apartments at 1234 King -- this building was built at 10th and Weller in 1891 and moved to its current location in 1907 ahead of the Jackson Street Regrade.

Hello Em Coffee (2021)

Sometime in the late 70's or early 80's, my father, Dan Mar, purchased the property at 1227 S Weller Street from a Mr. Dalgren. At that time, the property was 6 lots of raw land with a small warehouse structure located at the east end, which Mr. Dalgren had constructed in the 1950s. My dad built additions to it in the 1990's and I added a second floor several years ago. Hello Em is serving Vietnamese coffee there now.

My father told me Mr. Dalgren was a shoring subcontractor for the construction of I-5. Most of I-5 in the Seattle area is elevated above ground. This type of construction requires a temporary platform to support the concrete until it has acquired enough strength to support itself.  At that point, the shoring is removed and used again, down the road, for the next section of concrete to be built.

Back in those days, concrete shoring was primarily large wood post and beams and joist.  The spans for I-5 are quite large and therefore these large old growth Douglas fir wood post and beams were needed. I'm told that Mr. Dalgren built the 1227 building using the same materials he used for the concrete shoring.

You cannot find this type and size lumber today.  In 2019, we exposed the old wood post and beam structure and cleaned them off as part of a remodel that gave respect to the old materials and construction methods.

– Don Mar, Marpac Construction

 _{Old-growth Doug-fir beams at Hello Em, 2023. Photo: Mikala Woodward}  

In 2021, Hello Em opened a cafe and roastery inside Friends of Little Saigon Creative, a gathering space that includes an art gallery, community library, and an interactive exhibit about the past, present, and future of the Vietnamese community in Seattle.

Bailey Gatzert School (1938)

In 1889, South School opened at 12th and Weller, one of eight new buildings constructed for the rapidly expanding Seattle School district. The elegant structure was leveled by the Jackson Street Regrade in 1908. As the raw landscape was repopulated by a relocated Chinatown and a growing Nihonmachi, children attended Main Street School just north of Jackson (the building is still there at 307 6th Ave). A new school opened at the old South School site on December 21st, 1921. A Seattle Public Schools history tells us that “Principal Ada Mahon led a damp march of her pupils and teachers up Jackson Street to a new building that was called Bailey Gatzert School.” 

Generations of neighborhood children attended Bailey Gatzert under Miss Mahon’s leadership. They report that she ran a tight ship, but also provided a rich learning environment, with music, hands-on science, and the occasional outing:

Ada Mahon proudly taught the children of Japanese and Chinese immigrants to see themselves as Americans, and to believe in the nation’s ideals of justice and equality. This optimistic form of patriotism would be challenged by the events of WWII, when 320 students of Japanese descent at Bailey Gatzert were summarily incarcerated on the basis of race.  

In the 1950s when the freeway route was proposed, the Jackson Street Community Council noted that the highway would disrupt the routes many children used to walk to school. And indeed, the world the children of the CID inhabited before the freeway – walking or biking to Bailey Gatzert, Higo Variety Store, Collins Fieldhouse, and so on – was diminished significantly when Weller and Lane Streets were buried, and 14 lanes of concrete loomed overhead on King and Jackson Streets. 

Despite this loss, Bailey Gatzert remained a diverse school in the years after the freeway was built. When the building closed in the 1980s, the District cited earthquake concerns and an unstable slope at the western edge of the property (overlooking the freeway). A new Bailey Gatzert school opened at 14th and Yesler in 1988 (displacing the Royal Esquire Club, an African American social club that is now located in Columbia City). The site is now home to a Seattle Indian Health Board clinic, and senior housing run by Seattle Housing Authority. 

 _{Bailey Gatzert class with Miss Mahon in back row, 1938. Seattle Public Schools}  

 _{South School at 12th and Weller, c. 1900. Seattle Public Library}  

 _{Leaving old Main Street School, 1921. Wing Luke Museum} 

 _{Bailey Gatzert school, 1960. Seattle Public Schools}  

 _{First grade class at Bailey Gatzert, 1977. Seattle Public Schools}  

921 Lane (1948)

Larry Matsuda was born in the Minidoka incarceration camp, and grew up at 921 S. Lane Street. The families on his street were mostly Japanese or working-class European immigrants. His next door neighbor, Mrs. Merlino, kept chickens. The children played together on the “clay bank” that rose behind their houses, with Bailey Gatzert School visible at the top of the hill. The block was buried by I-5 in the early ‘60s.

It’s really peculiar to say that you grew up in an area, and now it's under the I-5 exit at Dearborn. It almost sounds like you're homeless, you know, you live under the I-5 exit. To have it buried there, is really strange. That whole section of what I knew, and grew up with – the church, the house, the clay bank. It's all gone. 

I mean, you could understand natural disasters – but this was historic discrimination. They had redlining, so you could only live in certain areas. Chinatown and Japantown existed largely because of discrimination. And then they put a freeway through. But we couldn't go anywhere else. We couldn’t live in Broadmoor even if we had the money. We did buy a house on Beacon Hill, and nobody would give my parents mortgage money, no bank in the whole city. My mother found someone in Bremerton – my mother and father went to Bremerton and got a loan.   

We all understood the game. That’s how things operated. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't fight it. I mean, if America says liberty and justice for all? Well, it really should be that way. But it's not. Clearly there's at least two different Americas -- one where people live, and one where you put freeways through. 

-- Larry Matsuda

Japanese Presbyterian Church (1957)

The Reverend Orio Inouye, the founder of Seattle’s Japanese Presbyterian Church, came to the US in 1905 after his church in Tokyo was burned to the ground by rioters. He first served as an assistant pastor to the charismatic and controversial minister Mark Matthews at First Presbyterian, but was able to build his own church at 9th and Weller in 1920.

In 1942 the church's congregation was incarcerated, along with the rest of the Japanese American population of the West Coast. The group continued to gather at Minidoka, and after the war, most of the church members returned to Seattle and went back to worshipping together in the building at 9th and Weller. Their 1957 50th Anniversary book depicts a thriving faith community. The Sunday School photo includes nearly 90 children -- including Larry Matsuda and his brother.

When the freeway was built, the church at 9th and Weller was torn down. The Japanese Presbyterian Church is now located in the Rainier Valley.  

The fence along the west side of 10th Ave is an access point for an encampment under the freeway that has been formed, displaced, reformed, and displaced again many times over the years. Vivi Veronica organized a mutual aid team there in the summer of 2020.

[Story from Vivi]

Humans are really phenomenally good at creating community out of nothing. Which is kind of wonderful, but sometimes a little bit sad. And so even in the space [under the freeway] where it's dark, and it's people that our society is trying actively to forget or remove, you still end up with community there. You had sometimes – I don't know where people got this stuff, but they got it somehow, and they powered it – people playing music and like, literally, grilling. There's something very human about sharing a fire. 

But then every couple of weeks they’d do a sweep and it’d all go away. And then it’d slowly come back. There's some of the same people, and some different and it's – it's resilient in a good and bad way. People go there because it's the least bad place to be. And then it comes back because that's what people do. And then they sweep it away again, it comes back, and they sweep it away again, and it comes back. That’s just how it was, and is probably how it still is, right? 

– Matthew Toles, CID Community Watch founder, 2021

Chinese Baptist Church (1924)

"I-5 construction was about the only thing church elders talked about every Sunday for many weeks," recalls Betty Lau, who was in junior high school when the freeway was built next to the church her family attended. When the congregation relocated in the wake of the freeway's construction, it followed many of its 2nd and 3rd generation families to Beacon Hill. But for those who still lived in the CID, the long bus ride made the new location inaccessible. "A part of my life ended," says Lau.

The Chinese Baptist Church's move is just one of many displacements in the long history of Seattle's Chinese immigrants and their descendants.

Chinese laborers were the first Asian community to establish a visible presence in Seattle, in the 1860s and ‘70s. They first settled on the waterfront, near Yesler’s Mill, in a compact community that offered housing and services for mostly single men coming and going from contract jobs outside the city. As White resentment of Chinese labor rose across the West, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barred most Chinese immigrants from entering the country (the ban would not end until WWII). In 1886, a racist mob drove the Chinese population out of Seattle, and the Great Seattle Fire destroyed what was left of the original Chinese settlement in 1889.  

As Chinese laborers slowly returned to the city, a second Chinatown was established at 2nd Ave and Washington St. Nearby development increased rents in the early 20th century, and when the Jackson Street Regrade opened up new land for development, Chinese immigrants moved again, building their third (and current) Chinatown along King Street. (The last remnants of the second Chinatown were destroyed by the 2nd Ave Extension in 1928.)

Originally a "mission church" created by the First Baptist Church of Seattle to serve Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century, the Chinese Baptist Church achieved independence in 1902 and has been led by Chinese pastors since the early 20th century. This building was completed in 1924, and became an important center for community life, with English language classes, scout troops, a kindergarten, and other services for Chinese Americans in the neighborhood.

The church participated in the larger CID community as well. The Jackson Street Community Council’s well-baby clinic opened there in 1947. The clinic was staffed by a public health nurse, and neighborhood physicians volunteered their services on Thursday afternoons, "while housewives weighed and measured, took temperatures." After 18 months serving 400 children, the clinic was taken over by the health department.

When the freeway cut the Chinese Baptist Church off from the rest of Chinatown, the congregation began to look for a new location. The new Chinese Baptist Church opened on Beacon Hill in 1977.

The old church building is now home to the Chinese Southern Baptist Church, led by Pastor Andrew Ng.

 _{Chinese Baptist Church, 10th and King, 1937. Photo: Puget Sound Regional Archives} 

 _{Baby Nishitani is examined by Dr. James Jackson at the Jackson Street Community Council's well baby clinic, 1947. Photo: Jackson Street Community Council/Wing Luke Museum} 

 _{Pastor Andrew Ng in the nave at the Chinese Southern Baptist Church, 2021. Photo: Alexa Strabuk/International Examiner} 

ACRS Food Bank (2016)

Asian Counseling and Referral Services operated a food bank out of a trailer at this site for nearly 20 years. Every Wednesday and Friday morning, neighborhood elders lined up under the freeway with roller bags and collapsible grocery carts, visiting with one another as they waited to receive their allotment of culturally appropriate food items. 

In February of 2022, the food bank expanded to meet the growing need in the neighborhood, moving around the corner to the former Tsue Chong noodle factory on Weller Street.

 _{In December of 2016 ACRS distributed 450 roasted chickens from their trailer at 921 S. King Street. Photo: Nate Baum / ACRS} 

Coast Hotel (1930s)

Elbe and Elmer Russell “Noodles” Smith bought the Coast Hotel at 903 King Street in 1927. Noodles was a charismatic gambler, bootlegger, and nightclub owner (he helped start the storied Black and Tan Club, among other establishments). The couple promptly invested in renovating and expanding the Coast Hotel, and Elbe took over as manager. “Plans call for a lobby, women’s parlor and a pool and billiard room,” the Seattle Enterprise reported. The new lounge and recreation rooms opened for guests two months later. “The lobby is handsomely furnished with leather settees and chairs of massive design, and the walls are frescoed in colors that are pleasing and restful… The Coast hotel probably is the most expensively furnished hotel West of Chicago catering to colored patrons.” It was listed in the Green Book, a resource for Black travelers seeking lodgings, restaurants, and other services where they would be welcomed, in an era when many establishments would not serve them.

Elbe and Noodles eventually parted ways, and Elbe continued to operate the hotel. In 1941 the Coast went “Ultra Modern,” offering hot fried chicken and ice cold beer.”  At Christmas that same year, “muffled wedding bells rang out” at the Coast Hotel, as Elbe Smith married Mr. Theodore Bell, with Rev. F.W. Penick of Mt. Zion Baptist Church performing the ceremony. The couple were divorced five years later. 

A 1948 Northwest Enterprise profile of Elbe Smith described her as “popular and pleasing,” with an “enviable position as a cosmopolitan hostess.” The hotel catered to railroad employees, who found it “a pleasant rendezvous for rest and quietude,” “within walking distance of all depots.” Said Elbe, “I find much pleasure in catering to our guests... I am doubly glad that I am able to give employment to eight men and women, thus adding to the joy of others. Our latch hangs on the outside of our door.” 

The Black press's glowing descriptions of the Coast Hotel appear in contrast to the terse coverage it received in Seattle's mainstream newspapers: essentially a few brief stories about liquor violations. The historic record often requires us to read between the lines of biased sources in order to construct a more accurate understanding of the past.

The Coast Hotel is listed in the City Directory until 1961 - shortly after that, it was torn down to make way for the freeway. Elbe Smith died in 1964.

 _{Coast Hotel ad, 1932. Northwest Enterprise} 

 _{Elbe Smith, 1948. Northwest Enterprise} 

InterIm Parking Lot (1970s)

The area between King and Jackson under the freeway was once mostly occupied by Western Gear Co, a light manufacturing plant. Its conversion to a parking lot managed by InterIm CDA, goes back to the 1970s, when the proposed Kingdome stadium threatened – and divided – the community. 

The activists and the business and property owners were not getting along together. The activists were protesting the stadium. The business community said, What do the activists know about business? That [Kingdome] might be a good thing for us. We have 60,000 people that will be coming into our restaurants.

One thing that brought us together was, we have all this airspace under I-5 freeway, where the freeway’s elevated over Jackson Street, over King Street. Some of the leaders said, well, let's go to the governor's office to see if we can talk the state into allowing InterIm to lease that airspace under the freeway, because hell, you know, all the disruption that the freeway construction caused this community, this would be a little mitigation.

So we worked out a deal where InterIm would lease the airspace under the freeway. And thinking of different uses, a parking lot -- that's sort of a natural. Even the activists who are against the stadium were thinking, well, it would be a moneymaker. And if they build the stadium, then during those sports events, the freeway would be rented out stall by stall to stadium-goers. Even activists knew a little about income and money-making deals. So the property owners and business owners, and the activists and residents came up with one project that we could all agree with. And from then we started working with each other.

The state paved and striped that parking lot -- 233 stalls. Can you imagine? It was it was the largest parking lot in downtown Seattle. And when it first opened -- a spanking brand new parking lot with all these white stripes -- it sat empty for months because we could not even give away parking. We were charging $6 a month per stall -- $6 a month. And we couldn't move that parking lot. People wanted to park right in front of their business. We didn't have meters in those days, so street parking was the primary way of parking down here.

But then Mayor Ullman comes up with this idea of the “magic carpet” service – in downtown Seattle, all the Metro buses up and down are free. Get on at Yesler at lunchtime, and go up to the Bon or Frederick & Nelson and go shopping. So that was pretty cool -- except it ended at Yesler, the south end of the magic carpet.

 So we went to the mayor's office. We said Hey, Mr. Mayor, you're discriminating against our elderly. Where the old folks are [in the CID], they can't take advantage of the free bus service downtown. So they said Yeah, we can extend the magic carpet service down to 8 ^th  and Jackson. Well, that's where our parking lot was! Ah -- we invented Park and Ride. Check it out! And the parking lot revenue, it was unrestricted funds for this nnonprofit InterIm.

-- Uncle Bob Santos

InterIm Community Development Authority, founded in the 1970s, had spent five decades organizing in the CID community, and developing affordable housing tailored to its needs. InterIm is currently working on a project to redevelop the area under I-5 into a community space.

 _{"Pay Here" for parking, 2023. Photo: Mikala Woodward} 

 _{Western Gear Co., 9th & King, 1958. Photo: Puget Sound Regional Archives} 

 _{Kingdome Protest, 1972. Bob Santos is second from right, front row. Photo: Eugene Tagawa/Wing Luke Museum} 

Caballeros de Dimas-Alang (1930s)

The heart of Seattle's Filipino community was located a few blocks west at Maynard Street, but 8th and King was home to a cluster of Filipino establishments, according to the 1938 City Directory.  Pio De Cano’s employment agency is located at 805 S. King Street. (De Cano, a long-time community leader, won a landmark lawsuit that overturned the Alien Land Law in 1940, making him the first Filipino homeowner in Seattle.) The Caballeros Cafe, also operated by De Cano, is at 811 King Street. And in between, at 807 King, the Directory lists the Caballeros De Dimas-Alang, a Filipino Masonic group that had chapters (lodges) up and down the West Coast. Pio De Cano was a leader in this organization as well.

Now, the lodge my dad helped start, it was called Caballeros deDimas-Alang, the [Burgos] Lodge. Joe Yumol painted a wall mural that depicted the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth. It was an artistic masterpiece. I just wish that somebody had tried to preserve it. I was always amazed, walking into the lodge and looking up – there was this huge mural. The lodge was a gathering place for itinerant workers.

 – Pio De Cano, Jr.

Next door to this row of storefronts stood four 2-storey residential buildings. Built in 1910 as single-family residences, by 1958 they had become rooming houses. The assessor who inspected the property for the highway department described the four buildings as “overcrowding the lot,” and noted that “the interior conditions are poor, and the rooms fairly reek with a mixture of cooking odors." "A mixture of races occupy the dwelling units,” he wrote, “with the majority being Phillipino [sic].”

These manongs are no longer here to tell their stories, so we don't know how they might have described the smells in their kitchens, or how they felt about living together in close quarters. In order to imagine their lives, we need to look beyond the bureaucratic documents that make up much of the historical record. 

For instance: The Filipino Forum, a community newspaper in Seattle, carries news of birthday parties and college students, alongside ads from local tailors, barber shops, and pool halls. In a drawer at the Filipino American National Historical Society, a tattered photo album shows Caballeros de Dimas-Alang gathering in San Francisco, San Diego, and Boston -- dressed to the nines, celebrating in style. 

InterIm’s Uncle Bob’s Place, opening in 2023, will offer affordable housing, community gathering space, and a new home for the beloved Bush Garden Restaurant, another historic gathering space, where Uncle Bob once sang Frank Sinatra songs on karaoke nights. It will also honor the Filipino men who lived at 8th and King in the years before the freeway.

 _{801-811 S. King St., 1937. Photo: Puget Sound Regional Archives} 

 _{813 S. King St., c. 1960. Photo: Washington Department of Transportation} 

 _{Caballeros De Dimas-Alang, Burgos Lodge, Seattle, c. 1934. Photo: UW Special Collections} 

 _{Unknown Caballeros, probably California, c. 1934. Photo: Filipino American National Historical Society} 

Okazaki Home

Kazuo and Tatsu Okazaki brought up seven children in a boarding house at 819 Weller Street. Their daughter Mary helped out as a child by counting the sheets for the laundry, and she recalls the awkwardness of sharing a bathroom with the boarders: "They were all single men."

Once, one of the boarders took his own life, using the gas stove in his room. Mary was eight at the time. "They had the door open, the firemen were there," she recalls. "I peeked and saw him, and then I ran back down the stairs. I used to have nightmares about it, but I never told my parents -- I wasn't supposed to be peeking from the stairs!"

In 1942, the family were incarcerated at Minidoka. They had to shut down their furniture business at 825 Jackson (location #9 on this map), but they were able to find someone to manage the boarding house while they were away.

WWII shattered and scattered the Okazaki family. The oldest son, Takaaki, was killed in France. His brother Frank was drafted and served in Italy. The older sisters left camp for school and/or jobs on the East Coast. Kazuo and Tatsu returned to their house on Weller after the war with just the two youngest children, Frank and Mary.

Frank Okazaki became an engineer, and was working for the highway department when the freeway route was being planned through his neighborhood -- and eventually through his home. The state bought the house at 819 Weller, and the family moved to Beacon Hill. "My mother was happy," says Mary. "For the first time in her life she had her own home, with no tenants to worry about."

Mary Okazaki married George Kozu in 1952. They brought up two children, and now live in a retirement home in South Seattle. In 2021 the Seattle Times photographed them being reunited with their great-grandchildren as COVID restrictions were lifted.

 _{819 S. Weller St., c. 1930. Courtesy of the Okazaki Family} 

 _{Mary Okazaki Kozu reunited with great-grandsons after COVID restrictions were lifted at her retirement home, 2021 The Seattle Times} 

Eng Family Home (1937)

Tuck Eng and his brothers lived at 616 8th Ave S. From their house you could see the rooming house at 819 Weller, where the Okazakis brought up their seven children. Larry and Alan Matsuda and the other Lane Street kids lived around the corner to the south. Every year the Old Woody pitching contest drew dozens of kids from the CID to Collins Field.

Lane Street and 8th Avenue South Intersection:  S.E. Corner was home plate.  Other respective corners were 1st, 2rd, and 3rd base.  The flat portion of the N.E. corner vacant lot between Lane St. and 8th Avenue was center field and any ball hit into the black berry bushes in Center field is a home run.  But the penalty was that the home run hitter had to fetch the ball, while the game continues.  My father bought a goat in the spring and the goat kept a large portion of center field pretty clear of black berry vines. Eighth Avenue between Lane and Weller was also our touch football field.  Plays in between seldom traffic.

-- Uncle Tuck Eng

In the 70 years since the freeway cut through the neighborhood, many generations of kids have grown up in the CID. You can find the latest crop playing at Donnie Chin's International Children's Park, just down the alley. Pro tip from a resident five-year-old: on your way, check out the metal pinwheels in the yard to your right.