The Real Estate Gentrifiers of 1889
A bold advertisement from the Post-Intelligencer lists the city’s power brokers as the first investors in a new development, explicitly using their status to sell land to the aspiring middle class.
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.
And the character of every distinct district in a city is determined by the class of people who own property and reside there. Careful people take this into consideration in purchasing sites for homes in addition to the questions of accessibility and desirability of location. For the information of such persons, the Renton Addition takes considerable pride in presenting the following list of bona fide purchasers of lots: Hon. H. G. Struve, Hon. C. H. Hanford (Chief Justice of Washington Territory), Mr. Leigh S. J. Hunt (Proprietor of the Post-Intelligencer), Mr. W. E. Bailey (Proprietor of the Evening Press), T. M. Reed Jr. (Register of the U.S. Land Office), and numerous other editors, attorneys, and bank officials.
“A man is known by the company he keeps. And the character of every distinct district in a city is determined by the class of people who own property and reside there.”
This 1889 advertisement reveals that the blueprint for Seattle's real estate culture—leveraging the social status of 'tastemakers' to drive up property values—was firmly in place long before the modern tech boom. It highlights how land development has historically been an instrument for the elite to define the 'character' of a neighborhood by attracting specific demographics, a strategy that echoes in today's luxury real estate marketing.
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