Seattle: 1900-1920 -From Boomtown, Through Urban Turbulence ...

42 Part OneHebrew Benevolent Association(which was established in 1903)established a free dispensary inthe Arcade Building on SecondAvenue. Attached was a clinicallaboratory, which providedmedical aid to the “deservingpoor” without ethnic distinction.Historian Quintard Taylorhas provided the definitivestudy of the origins and developmentsof Seattle’s black communityin his 1994 classic. Here,that history is merely introduced.Seattle’s African Americancommunity originated in1882, when a black pioneernamed William Gross boughttwelve acres of land from HenryYesler for $1,000. Gross gaveaway some lots to friends andsold the rest. Located betweenTwenty-fourth and Twenty-seventhavenues between Howelland Olive streets, this area became the nucleus of the city’soriginal Black community. Gross had been a steward onthe Constitution, a boat shuttling between Olympia andTacoma in the late 1850s. He settled in Seattle in 1858,when he established a popular inn called Our House. Theshipbuilder Robert Moran claimed to have been stakedby Gross after “I was dumped out without breakfast onYesler’s wharf at 6 o’clock in the morning of NovemberBoth views courtesy Museum of History and IndustryThe Standard Furniture Buildingat the northwest corner of SecondAvenue and Pine Street was builtas soon as its big lot was broughtto a new grade during the razingof Denny Hill. Completed in 1907of steel, with large windows and aterra-cotta tile skin, it survives asan early example of a Seattle highrise.Like its building the businesswas also bold. “Your Credit isGood” was the come-hither linethat for years Standard Furniturepainted throughout the city onwhat seemed like every availablelarge surface. A decade earlierCooper and Levy led the way insaturation marketing by promotingtheir gold rush outfitting service onbroadsides, billboards, periodicals,and banners flapping from theroofs of trolleys. Operating outof the old Olympic Block on thesoutheast corner of Yesler Wayand First Avenue South, Cooperand Levy’s miners supplies spreadto the sidewalk.