A Clubhouse Dream Dies on 12th Avenue
In 1923, Seattle’s University Filipino Club thought it had a deal for a $39,500 headquarters. Then the owner added interest charges—and neighbors made clear they did not want Filipino residents next door.
Like a lightning bolt out of a clear sky, the purchase of a house on 12th Avenue for the University Filipino Club—which had been going on quite smoothly—came to a sudden halt when it was announced that a misunderstanding between the owner of the house and the party purchasing was motivated only by an underground feeling of race prejudice.
According to Vicente Kevea, president of the University Filipino Club, who has been urging the movement ahead, everything had been fixed up to the effect that the house was to be paid for at the price of $39,500, with some amount paid down and the rest in monthly installments, without any further charge of interest on the money paid in installments. The Filipino party, composed of the leading Filipino business men in Seattle, was ready to sign the contract one sunny morning when, to their disappointment, the owner of the house insisted that interest on the money paid by installment was a necessary part of a business transaction of that nature. In other words, it was a sudden and simple reversal of a previous verbal agreement.
The Filipino party did not accede to the new clause of the contract and, according to unconfirmed reports, they have given up the movement entirely.
A few days, however, before the fatal day of signing the contract, rumors were heard around the neighborhood that the people living next door to the proposed Filipino headquarters were not in favor of having Filipinos for neighbors. It is being surmised that this attitude of the would-be neighbors had in one way or another exerted an influence upon the owner of the house to change—as she did change—her mind, and for an excuse insisted on charging interest which in her previous agreement was not included.
At least for the present the idea of getting a clubhouse has been abandoned.
“It is being surmised that this attitude of the would-be neighbors had in one way or another exerted an influence upon the owner of the house...”
The collapse of the clubhouse deal is an early Seattle example of exclusion working through private real-estate decisions rather than an explicit law. Neighbors’ opposition and an owner’s last-minute changed terms did what racial covenants would later do more formally. The story rhymes with today’s fights over who gets to buy, rent and belong in Seattle neighborhoods.
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