The Temperance House: A Traveler's Refuge on Second Street
For the weary visitor to 1870s Seattle, a newly constructed boarding house promises 'neatness and dispatch' with a touch of European hospitality.
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.
Temperance House, Second Street, Seattle, W. T. N. Louis, Proprietor. Board and lodging by the week, $6.00. Board and lodging by the day, $1.50. Shrewd accommodations, $2.50. Rates from $1.50 to $5.00. The house is newly built and finished throughout; has large and well-furnished rooms. Billiard table and Board on the European plan. We convey to and from the house free of charge. No Chinamen employed.
“The house is newly built and finished throughout; has large and well-furnished rooms.”
This advertisement offers a window into the highly transactional and often exclusionary world of 19th-century boarding houses. The explicit mention of 'No Chinamen employed' serves as a stark historical artifact, marking the pervasive anti-Asian labor sentiment that defined the economic landscape of the Pacific Northwest during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
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