Seattle YWCA Rents Burke Building Rooms for Working Women
With the Y.W.C.A. newly established in the Burke Building, Seattle women organize to support young laborers arriving in the city.
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The Young Women's Christian Association, an organization but three weeks old in Seattle, held a mass meeting at Plymouth Congregational church yesterday afternoon. In a nutshell, the organization aims to do the same work for young women that the Y.M.C.A. does for young men. In all of the larger cities of the East, lunch rooms are maintained in the business centers, where young women may bring their lunches and eat them in cheerful rooms. The association in Seattle has just rented two good rooms on the third floor of the Burke building for offices and conversation rooms, where the young women will be invited to come freely to read or eat their lunches during business hours. Mrs. Charles V. Piper spoke of the need of company felt by servant girls in private families, where some consideration is needed.
“The organization aims to do the same work for young women that the Y.M.C.A. does for young men.”
This early advocacy for working women’s lunch spaces highlights the struggle for basic amenities in an urbanizing Seattle. It echoes modern debates about the lack of affordable, safe, and third-space environments for low-wage service workers in the city center.
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