The Ghostly Tenants of the YMCA Hall
A religious schism in Tacoma leads to an unusual standoff when Spiritualists are locked out of their meeting place and the Y.M.C.A. finds its rooms at the center of local ecclesiastical drama.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Spiritualists are already making things interesting in Tacoma. They held a meeting and organized a society in the Y.M.C.A. Hall on Monday of last week. There was some little talk as to the appropriateness or convenience of the association using the rooms for the meetings of a different organization, but on Saturday there appeared notices in the local papers that other meetings were to be held on the following Sunday. When O.H. Aitken, who has been acting as janitor since the discharge of that official, went up Pacific Avenue with a notice of the meeting posted in front of the Y.M.C.A. building, he promptly tore it down. On Monday, instead of going to the hall and opening up the room, Mr. Aitken remained at home, and those who came to the cottage found the doors locked and the blinds pulled down. In the evening, the place was still deserted and dark. In the meantime, however, [the Spiritualists] had secured Hall, in the Conroy building, and had a placard standing on the avenue in front of the entrance giving notice of the change, and adding: 'The Y.M.C.A. tricked us out of their building.' Dr. Taylor, who is the leading spirit of the Spiritualists, denounced the action of the Y.M.C.A. at the meeting. Mr. Aitken states that it was all a mistake of his; that he was not notified that the society had arranged to secure the hall, and that after the first meeting he was given to understand that they would not be allowed to meet there again.
“The Y.M.C.A. tricked us out of their building.”
Conflicts over the 'appropriate' use of shared civic and community spaces remain a constant in Seattle and Tacoma. Just as this 1887 dispute reflected the intense religious and moral gatekeeping of the era, contemporary debates over who belongs in public and quasi-public spaces continue to shape the social geography of the Puget Sound.
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