Lou Graham, Seattle’s Misunderstood Madam

Illustration by Eleanor Shakespeare. 

In the present store of Invoice Speidel’s Underground Tour, an infinite black-and-white {photograph} looms over the T-shirts and historical past books on the market. A stern-looking lady with darkish, frizzy hair instructions the group within the image. She sits, ramrod straight and draped in silk, sporting rouge seemingly utilized by a small spatula. An indication beneath the image tells guests that is Lou Graham, the brothel boss who constructed Seattle. The ladies round her look out from below their shiny, finger-waved coifs with dour mouths and closely painted eyes.

I’ve simply accomplished my second go to to this oddball attraction, a guided stroll by the labyrinth of basements, below-ground walkways, and again entrances beneath the colourful pavement glass of Pioneer Sq.. For the reason that Sixties, numerous vacationers, locals, and subject journey teams have strolled these tunnels, a subterranean memento of Seattle’s efforts to regrade its streets to a better elevation after the Nice Seattle Fireplace in 1889.

Docents do their very own analysis and punch up the outcomes with a liberal dose of punny jokes, so the tour differs relying on whenever you go. Seattle’s early sewer woes, bogs that flush in reverse at excessive tide, at all times draw laughs. However sooner or later, dialog inevitably turns to Graham. Seattle’s legendary madam might purchase off anybody to maintain her bordello operational and staffed, our tour information informs us. Tales of her largesse embody bailing out the town after the Nice Seattle Fireplace and donating land to the King County public college system.  

And the ladies who labored for Graham—those who ostensibly encompass her in that photograph? On the tour, we study they used euphemistic job titles, like “seamstress.” Because of this, Seattle’s census overflowed with seamstresses—who might barely sew a sew. This punch line predictably elicits titters from the group.

Since my journey to the underground, I’ve spent a whole lot of time with Graham’s ghost. I mapped her household tree again in Germany till, one department at a time, it was terminated by conflict and sickness. I sat in archives sporting a borrowed pair of white cotton gloves, touching her receipts and payments. I learn the lengthy record of her private results and valuables, tallied up by legal professionals after her demise. I noticed her closing physician’s invoice and the slip from the Bonney Watson funeral dwelling, signed by L.W. Bonney, detailing the black horses that pulled her casket on a carriage as a part of her funeral procession. 

What I discovered was a hard-working immigrant, a savvy and beneficiant boss, and a lady with extra property deeds to her identify than a lot of the males working within the Dexter Horton constructing.

What I didn’t discover was a lot of the narrative I heard on the Underground Tour—the identical one enshrined in any article or e book that mentions Graham, or on the historic plaque in Seattle’s downtown. As a result of nearly each single piece of recent writing on Graham, from Wikipedia to Washington’s revered HistoryLink to articles revealed by this journal, cite one man—and nobody else. 

When Invoice Speidel regarded out the window of his fourth-floor workplace within the just lately renovated Pioneer Constructing, he had a view of Seattle’s historical past—and of its potential future. Even after he turned a PR flack, the person associates referred to as “Spy” carried himself like an old-time journalist, right down to the bow tie and black-rimmed glasses. His gravelly voice betrayed his voracious urge for food for cigarettes and, till he acquired sober, sturdy drink. He was a real son of Seattle; his father, William Speidel Sr., had been a soccer captain on the College of Washington, about probably the most native cred a person might have. 

By the Sixties, the town was at a crossroads. Seattle hosted the World’s Honest in 1962, including the Area Needle to its skyline and proclaiming its position in America’s space-age future. Boeing’s presence earned it the nickname Jet Metropolis. Now, the city was embroiled in huge questions on what it meant to develop into this moniker. 

Plans had been afoot to exchange the long-lasting buildings of Seattle’s oldest neighborhood with the sort of brutalist cement eyesores taking on the town—just like the monstrosity of a parking storage deliberate for the location of the outdated Seattle Lodge, throughout from Speidel’s workplace. Basic brick buildings made means for contemporary condominium homes and hulking halls of paperwork. Previous, run-down Pioneer Sq. was the final place the town’s touristy organizations needed to ship folks.

To fight the steamrolling, Speidel adopted the position of historian. By revealing the key tunnels of Pioneer Sq., he hoped, extra would consider the buildings above had been value saving. “We had been pitching restoration, not devastation,” Speidel instructed Jean Godden, a former metropolis councilmember, later a columnist for the Seattle Publish-Intelligencer. 

In a 1964 Seattle Day by day Instances column, Speidel uncovered newspaper readers to the musty, almost untouched historic relics below Seattle’s present-day sidewalks. The general public flooded his workplace with letters asking how they may see the underground and study extra about this historical past. Speidel started giving formal excursions—typically together with stops for a pint in a few of his favourite spots—for a $1 advised donation. He recruited highschool college students to assist clear the place up so the passageways got here off charming reasonably than creepy. 

His plan labored. Not solely did tens of 1000’s of individuals flock to the excursions, however they turned evangelists for Pioneer Sq.. They left imbued with a way of urgency to avoid wasting these outdated areas. 

Capitalizing on this curiosity, Speidel wrote and revealed quite a few historic and traditionally adjoining books, together with Sons of the Earnings. His writing echoed his speech sample—punctuated with quips, verging on run-on sentences. His tales had been gleaned from old-timers who needed to speak, not in-depth examinations of property data. There are puns and ellipses, however hardly any sourcing to be discovered. These had been exuberant tales, not stuffy historic volumes.

In some ways, his inclusion of Graham and her “women from Hades” preserved them as necessary members of the town’s previous. However the work appeared to cease when Speidel did—he died in 1988. Because of this, his model, correct or not, is the one one left.

Her story’s there in case you search for it. By August 4, 1891, Lou Graham was a standard sight on Seattle’s streets. She lower a memorable determine in fashionable, imported apparel—a pinched shirtwaist, voluminous sleeves, and a small hat perched on her giant, piled hair—standing out in a metropolis nonetheless on the sting of wilderness. On this heat day, Graham left her non permanent residence on Jackson Road, navigating the mud, refuse, and animal excrement of Pioneer Sq.. She possible stopped by Third and Washington to test on development of her new three-story brick constructing rising from the ashes of Seattle’s devastating fireplace. Right here, Graham would proceed to construct a repute as “a really well-known lady to the Seattle under-world,” as The Seattle Star newspaper described her. 

Graham was the closest factor this frontier city needed to a actuality TV star. Native papers spared no element in chronicling her fashions and baubles. She wore diamonds at her neck, wrists, bust, and throat, to not point out the diamond-encrusted “miniature dagger” hat pin estimated to be value about $8,500 immediately. They had been a big weight to hold within the warmth as Graham headed up the steep slope of First Hill, in impractical heeled boots, towards the brand new King County courthouse. Earlier than Interstate 5 bisected the town, locals dubbed this climb “Profanity Hill” for the lawmakers, attorneys, and permit-seekers who huffed and cursed their means upward. 

As soon as on the courthouse, she filed a collection of paperwork to develop into a naturalized U.S. citizen, signing her identify in a crazy scroll. It was principally a formality. She was already established in Seattle, a profitable businesswoman, a property proprietor, and within the means of amassing extra wealth than every other single lady would know right here for many years to come back. However technically, she ought to have achieved this way back, actually earlier than she bought any land. 

Graham by no means accomplished the method she started that day. We don’t know why. After her demise, that curious oversight would go away her ample belongings in limbo for near a decade. 

Civic data, property particulars, and authorized notes assist construct an image of Graham. However, regardless of that big photograph within the Underground Tour present store, modern-day Seattle one way or the other nonetheless has no official file of what she regarded like. There are few, if any, verified descriptions of Graham. The numerous newspaper accounts by no means describe her appears to be like, most definitely indicating that they weren’t, by the requirements of the time, exceptional.  

The form of her face and the colour of her eyes have been in any other case misplaced to historical past, however some particulars of her life do stay. Graham got here to america from Germany as a teen named Elise Oben. She was functionally alone starting on the age of 16. From New York, she disappears, solely to resurface in her late 20s as a brand new property proprietor in Pioneer Sq.. It’s unclear how she acquired there, and even when. 

Similar to luxurious housing builders got here out for Amazon employees in 2015, Graham confirmed up for a boomtown in want. Seattle’s exploding inhabitants overflowed with virile males who had come in search of work within the woods or on the waterfront or out on one of many boats certain for Alaskan gold fields. She established a enterprise that was a positive factor. How she discovered the tips of the commerce, we don’t know. 

Inside a number of years, The Seattle Day by day Instances described her as “a lady well-known within the tenderloin district.” The 1900 article detailed how she paid the authorized charges of a lady who killed her abusive boyfriend in self-defense. Graham reportedly didn’t know the lady however examine her case within the paper and lent her $1,000—near $35,000 immediately. Earlier than lengthy she was a frequent character within the newspaper.

Girls working in her brothel might anticipate higher-than-average wages—by an element of 10, a minimum of—than private maids or these squinting over stitches in a garment manufacturing unit. Through the years, Graham took in and cared for a number of youngsters whose dad and mom abused alcohol or had gone bust within the Klondike. She employed people of all races, together with Indigenous girls (which was unlawful on the time) and quite a few Chinese language immigrants in an period when anti-Asian sentiment fomented full-on riots. Her property filings consult with her longtime right-hand man merely as “Chong,” however Graham trusted him along with her enterprise dealings.

One of many few data which incorporates her precise handwriting is an 1890 petition to widen the wood sidewalk in entrance of her constructing. She signed the typewritten missive with “and your petitioner will ever pray,” and her identify. The Chairman of the Road Committee—a very nominal place of energy—advisable that “the petition not be granted,” stating that if one piece of sidewalk was widened, the whole avenue would must be re-planked. It’s a minor second, to make certain, however hardly an expression of Graham’s alleged unchecked civic energy. Or, maybe, the letter was the one and solely time she pursued conventional channels to get her means. 

“In Lou’s days, when prostitutes had been booked on the metropolis jail, they listed their occupation as ‘seamstress,’” Speidel wrote in Sons of the Earnings. This lore reverberates; certainly one of Seattle’s craft breweries even made a beer referred to as “Seamstresses Union.” It’s a fantastic story, however even an off-the-cuff look into metropolis data proves the notion of intercourse employees masquerading as seamstresses doesn’t maintain. 

Whereas numerous commercials supply seamstress positions in bars and brothels, there are far, much more hand-inked courtroom data on the time which doc Graham’s ladies being arrested and tried for prostitution, some as many as a half-dozen instances over the span of some years. 

Employment data don’t flip up rather more. There’s nearly no overlap when cross-referencing the names of girls arrested for working at Graham’s home with census knowledge from the time. The fact, it appears, is census employees didn’t even hassle to depend the residents of the brothel to start with.

The concept intercourse work one way or the other wanted to be covert is an anachronism. Seattle’s newspapers often listed the names of each intercourse employees and purchasers. The newspaper’s courtroom blotter had no drawback crediting a lady as a “frequent prostitute,” even when she was solely in courtroom for pinching 50 cents off a consumer. A lot of the girls who had been arrested and tried for intercourse work weren’t even granted the dignity of full names. Booked as merely “Emma” or “Annie #2” or “French Camille,” they had been churned by a system that offered them little and didn’t contemplate their births, deaths, or official employment worthy of posterity. In lots of instances, the one file these girls left behind was their interplay with the authorized system. 

The notion that every one these “seamstresses” within the Pioneer Sq. space couldn’t probably have been mending aprons and stitching britches additionally elides the ladies truly hunched over stitching machines. Seattle historical past books focus on the numerous single males who got here right here to search out work. However a whole lot of girls—unable to discover a job or a husband after the Civil Warfare—did, too. Hundreds moved to the Pacific Northwest to work as lecturers, maids, and sure, seamstresses. It was low-paying, back-breaking work, and created a working class of girls on the waterfront. By 1900, clothes and dry items had been a million-dollar trade right here; we nonetheless see its legacy in corporations like Eddie Bauer or Filson.

Regardless of her affect, Graham couldn’t cease a rising tide of performative morality. Within the late 1800s, Seattle’s rising higher crust pressed its mayors to limit intercourse employees to a small space. Every new reformer who took workplace would suggest transferring this arbitrary zone—referred to as the “deadline”—farther from downtown. Every time, Graham one way or the other managed to gerrymander that line so it neatly sidestepped her constructing. However in 1903, the road lastly got here for her.  

Decide Thomas Humes took workplace and outlawed homes of sick reputation completely. This time, Graham was powerless. She fled to San Francisco to regroup. There, on the age of 48, she died abruptly in a German hospital. 

In line with Speidel, it was syphilis that acquired her. The reality languished for many years within the Puget Sound Regional Archives, a hulking constructing on the plush Bellevue School campus simply off I-90. Right here, Graham’s property paperwork dwell in a collection of accordion-
type folders. A sheaf of medical data, on tissue-thin paper, doc her closing days. 

She was struck abruptly by what was possible horrendous ache. Her well being declined for a number of days, throughout which era she racked up a invoice of $1,740, greater than $50,000 adjusted for inflation. In the end, although, she couldn’t be saved. It was a mercifully fast demise—in contrast to one introduced on by syphilis, which may drag on for years—most definitely as a result of some sort of perforated ulcer or undiagnosed abdomen most cancers. However the syphilis story caught. Whilst newspapers trumpeted particulars of Graham’s passing (and there have been many), her reason for demise, like so many particulars about girls in her line of labor, by no means appeared to be value investigating. 

Lou Graham’s resplendent brick constructing nonetheless stands at Third and Washington, immediately the house of Union Gospel Mission. The area as soon as used for playing and different illicit actions offers companies to a homeless inhabitants now at disaster ranges. 

It’s straightforward to overlook the bronze plaque on the purple brick exterior. In a uncommon flip for a chunk of civic satisfaction, the marker acknowledges the previous website of “Lou Graham’s Sporting Home,” calling it “probably the most elegant of Seattle’s bordellos.” The textual content concludes that “upon her demise in 1903, her property was given to the general public faculties of King County.” 

It’s a relic of Washington’s state centennial in 1989. And it’s principally flawed, although the constructing did seem like a really fashionable brothel certainly. 

After Graham died with out a will, King County tried to assert her properties—a dozen in whole, from Bellingham to Tacoma. Since she by no means accomplished her naturalization paperwork, begun on the courthouse that long-ago summer season day, the county argued she shouldn’t have been capable of purchase land within the first place. Her siblings again in Germany had been among the many events who needed a chunk of her property; after a seven-year authorized battle, the courtroom break up up the properties. So, sure, the Highline Public Colleges fundamental workplace does at present sit on a former Lou Graham hypothesis property, however not out of the kindness of her coronary heart. The distortion of her life is now actually etched within the civic file.

The chaos after Graham’s early and surprising demise dispersed her legacy in all instructions. Her properties bought at fire-sale costs to pay excellent money owed. It might have been simpler to trace down items of her historical past—and a verifiable {photograph}—earlier than auctions scattered her belongings. However nobody did. 

In a 1966 column, Speidel contemplated that “possibly Seattle is getting simply sufficiently old to have a historical past or desire a historical past.” In that, he was most likely right. However his account was only one. One man. One lens. One storyteller. 

Since then, a number of historians have added verified historic books to our metropolis’s reference shelf. However in contrast to New York, Chicago, and even San Francisco, our personal metropolis’s historical past continues to be an early draft. There simply aren’t that many books about nineteenth-century Seattle which are written for most people. 

It’s not Graham’s fault bygone many years left us with comparatively few shreds of laborious proof about her life. The historical past of Seattle has been written by individuals who might learn, who had time to jot down letters and diaries, and whose letters and diaries had been deemed necessary sufficient to avoid wasting. Speidel was one good storyteller, however Lou Graham’s reality was extra textured, extra nuanced, and extra uncommon than any fiction.