Seattle Tries to Close the Side Doors on Its Saloons
City officials drafted a new liquor ordinance to repeal the old “wide entrance” law and force every saloon to have a single street entrance, banning “ladies’ entrances” and other side-door workarounds.
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 license committee of the house of delegates, the ordinance committee of the board of aldermen, Mayor Phelps, Comptroller Farry and Corporation Counsel Boots held a three-hour session yesterday afternoon, discussing the demerits of the recent “wide entrance” ordinance passed by the two houses and drafting a new general ordinance governing the liquor traffic, which shall have incorporated a clause covering the side entrance question. The new ordinance will repeal all former ordinances relating to the sale of liquor, and with less verbiage and more direct language will be made more effective and less subject to attack on the question of validity. It will specify that each saloon must have one entrance only on a thoroughfare, with no side doors and no “ladies’ entrance,” “family entrance,” or other seductive devices leading into boxes. The committees did not conclude their labors yesterday afternoon and adjourned to tomorrow evening.
““It will specify that each saloon must have one entrance only on a thoroughfare, with no side doors and no ‘ladies’ entrance,’ ‘family entrance,’ or other seductive devices.””
Cities still fight over how bars and nightlife shape streets—whether a single entrance makes a venue safer or merely easier to control, and how far city hall should go in micromanaging private business. The “ladies’ entrance” fight is an ancestor of today’s alcohol-licensing, sidewalk-café and venue-regulation debates.
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