A Haven for Working Women
A newly opened, elegantly furnished hotel designed to provide safe, dignified housing for the city's growing workforce of stenographers, dressmakers, and clerks.
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This handsome and well-appointed hotel, just finished the past year and elegantly furnished throughout with all the comforts and conveniences of a modern private residence, is centrally located on the North Seattle cable line at the corner of Republican and Poplar streets. It is now under the supervision of Mrs. Hammond, who has in the few months of her occupancy proven herself a most capable and popular manager. This institution was projected to meet the needs of women and girls coming to the city on business or pleasure, and for the business women of our city—stenographers, dressmakers, operators, and clerks—who have been enabled to push their way along lines of industry in which success involves tact and faithfulness to detail. The association behind it, comprised of home-loving women, recognized that the business girl of today is a participant in a new industrial reality. The association has spent much time and money in its erection and, with its yet light patronage, they are firm in the belief that when better understood it will enjoy more than the anticipated favorable support. All young ladies without parental roofs are cordially invited to go out and look the house over; they will find large halls, pleasant dining rooms, neat chambers, sewing rooms, and large parlors beautifully finished, including a new piano. Charges are from $4 to $7 per week.
“The business girl of this year... is liable before its close to be called into a partnership of home making, and that the self-command gained by contact with business methods and systematic detail is no mean part of the necessary training for the complicated obligations of a well-ordered home.”
In 1894, Seattle was grappling with how to integrate women into a burgeoning industrial workforce while maintaining Victorian standards of 'respectability.' The Sarah H. Yesler hotel highlights a historical moment where 'boarding' was the primary urban housing solution for single, independent women, predating the modern struggle to provide affordable, accessible housing for the city's service-sector employees.
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