A Safe Harbor for Working Women
The Young Women’s Christian Association reports on its first three months of providing boarding house referrals and noon-hour rest spaces.
The Young Women’s Christian Association gave a successful public reception at the rooms, 712 Third street, last Wednesday evening. The association has been organized a little over three months now and is in a flourishing condition, with over eighty members. There is a committee to meet the trains and boats when they arrive to greet any who are without friends and recommend them to good boarding houses or give whatever advice may be needed by a strange young woman in a strange city. The employment bureau has done some very good service in finding homes and employment for girls free of charge. The noon rest committee has enlarged its facilities for serving lunch so that all young women who wish to come at the noon hour may be waited upon without delay. About thirty young women visit this department every day between the hours of 11 a. m. and 2 p. m.
“There is a committee to meet the trains and boats when they arrive to greet any who are without friends and recommend them to good boarding houses.”
The YWCA’s focus in the 1890s on assisting 'strange young women in a strange city' echoes the ongoing struggle to provide safe housing and support for newcomers in a rapidly growing, often expensive Seattle. Today, the organization still tackles labor and housing security, albeit with vastly different challenges.
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