Rainier Club
The Rainier Club
The Rainier Club is a social club in Seattle, Washington. The building of the club was completed in 1904 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The club was founded in 1888 in what was then Washington Territory ( the State was created the following year ). In 2008 the club had 1300 members. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 22, 1976.
History
The Rainier Club was proposed at a meeting of six leading members of the Seattle company on February 23, 1888; he was formally established on 25 July, 1888. The participants of the original founding meeting were JR McDonald, president of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad; John Leary, the former mayor of Seattle and Lander contact; Norman Kelly; RC Washburn, editor of the Seattle Post- Intelligencer; Bailey Gatzert, former mayor and participated in Schwabacher 's; A. B. Stewart and James McNaught. Other founding members were Eugene Carr, Judge Thomas Burke and William Allison Peters.
The club is named after the British Admiral Peter Rainier. The name was probably chosen with the nearby Tacoma because of the rivalry between Seattle, whose citizens were trying to enforce at that time the name of Mount Tacoma for the mountain now known as Mount Rainier. 1892 sent the Rainier Club actually a delegation to Washington, DC, which took effect on Rainier as a name for the mountain. The emblem of the club was based on the 1877 in Victoria, British Columbia, founded the Union Club.
Because the laws of the territory in 1888 did not provide for the establishment of a private club, the Rainier Club was initially founded as a boarding house and restaurant for men. He was re-founded on 18 January 1899 as a private club after the meantime resulting state in 1895 revised the relevant law.
The first seat of the club was in a part of the 22 -room mansion of James McNaught on Fourth Avenue in the city ( at the site is now the Seattle Central Library). McNaught was happy about having a tenant because he had accepted the post of Supervisory Director of the Northern Pacific Railroad in St. Paul, Minnesota. The house also served, in addition to the armory at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Union Street, as a temporary city hall of the city after the Great Seattle Fire in 1889, most of the city was destroyed. These Terms and involved more of city leaders in the club.
McNaught and the club were, however, not very long agreed on the terms of the lease, so the club for a short time moved to the Bailey Building (now located at the intersection of Second Avenue and Cherry Street, the Broderick Building ); February 1893 there was the clubhouse in rooms of the newly built theater (on the site of today's Arctic Building ). The Rainier Club acquired the property at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Columbia Street in downtown Seattle, where he remain to this day, in 1903. The building was designed by a native of Spokane, Washington architect Kirtland Cutter and completed in 1904. The 1929 addition built Südflugel was planned by the Seattle architect Carl F. Gould; comes from him the draft of the input in the Georgian style and the ornamentation of the interior in the Art Deco, which originated at the same time.
In 1899 the club was the starting point for several members of the Harriman Alaska Expedition. EH Harriman, John Burroughs, John Muir, Edward S. Curtis and Henry Gannett translated from here to their expedition to Seal Iceland and other islands in the Bering Strait and the coasts on both sides of the strait and celebrated their return here.
Gifford Pinchot was on the journey that led to the founding of the United States Forest Service and Mount Rainier National Park, a guest at the Rainier Club. A decade later, accompanied by Edward S. Curtis, 1903-1920 Member, Theodore Roosevelt on his journey through the new National Park. The club has 35 photo engravings and 27 platinum and silver prints that Curtis anfertigte during this trip.
Among the club members was also John C. Olmsted of the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon - Pacific Exposition ( AYP exposure) planned. From the fairgrounds later emerged the campus of the University of Washington. The Olmsted also played a major role in designing the system of parks and boulevards in the city.
As a private social club of the Rainier Club of the early experiments of the city and the state in terms of Prohibition was the exception, but when in 1916 the alcohol serving the entire state was prohibited, the club could no longer sell alcohol. During Prohibition, the club decided why multiple guidelines according to which " will allow an employee of the club under any circumstances, alcohol to buy, sell or possess on the premises of the club ." However, the guidelines did not contain provisions on the possession of alcohol by members.
The Rainier Club was not spared by the global economic crisis. After the construction of the south wing in 1929 year saw himself soon a decline in the number of members opposite, because many members of the fees could no longer afford. In hope of new members joining fee in 1932 was even reduced from 500 to 200 U.S. dollars and in October 1933 to 100 U.S. dollars. In the course of 36 months, the number of members at that time was decreased from 851 to 615. The club also benefited from the end of Prohibition, as the new alcohol laws of the State allowed the sale of alcohol only in private clubs. Similarly, the entry fee was withdrawn in 1948 from 650 to 400 U.S. dollars after the sale of alcohol in Washington was re- released in full.
Half a century after the AYP Exposition played the club members at the orientation of the Century 21 Exposition in 1962 a similarly prominent role. Eddie Carlson, president of Western International Hotels ( later Westin ), was a driving force in organizing the World's Fair, and many of the conferences were held in preparation for the clubhouse.
In 1993, the then President of the United States Bill Clinton held two meetings of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC ) from Ministerial level with Japan and China in the Rainier Club. This was the first APEC meeting in the United States and the first high-level coming together with the People's Republic of China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.
Originally the club had only male and only white members. The first member of Asian origin was taken on November 25, 1966 ( the Japanese consul in Seattle, however, was from 1923 until the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 an honorary member of the club. ); the first black member was on 25 July 1978, the contractor Luther Carr; the first female member was dated 22 August 1978 addressed to the Judge Betty Fletcher, who was also the first female president of the Bar Association of Seattle and King County.
Other prominent members were several members of the Blethen family, the owners of the Seattle Times and the art collector Richard Fuller ( founder of the Seattle Art Museum ) and HC Henry (founder of the Henry Art Gallery ).
Among the prominent guests in the club were Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain ), John Philip Sousa, Buffalo Bill, William Howard Taft, Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur, General Douglas MacArthur, Babe Ruth, Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary and members of the early Japanese trade delegations in the United states.