Archives West Finding Aid

The Woman's Century Club was founded by ten Seattle women (including the club's first president, suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt) on July 31, 1891. The club was organized at the home of Julia E. Kennedy, Seattle's first female superintendent of schools. Its purpose was to promote the intellectual growth of its members and to lend its influence toward solving altruistic problems of the community. The club was named in reference to the nineteenth century, which many women called the Woman's Century in recognition of the great accomplishments women had made in those years. The Woman's Century Club, both a social and educational club, was comprised of "departments" or interest groups representing members' academic interests, including Art, Current Events, Drama, Household Administration, Literature and Travel, Music, Parliamentary Procedure, Philosophy and Science, Political Science, and Social Service. The club also served the community by, among other initiatives, paying the salary of the city's first librarian and working to raise the age of consent from 12 to 18.

After first meeting at the Seattle Public Library and at members' homes, the club built its own meeting space in 1925 at 807 East Roy Street (the Harvard Exit) in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. The space allowed the club to host popular activities including lectures and presentations, concerts, theatrical productions, receptions (one honoring Amelia Earhart in 1933), and more. Upon the building’s transformation into a movie theater in 1968, the club continued to meet in the lobby of the Harvard Exit until January 2015. The building was then sold and slated for offices and a restaurant, and club meetings were held at the Dearborn House on First Hill.

For forty years between the 1920s and 1960s, the club also had a separate Juniors group that was open to the daughters of club members.

(Source: "Woman's Century Club (Seattle)" essay by Mildred Andrews (1998), historylink.org and “After 90 years at the Harvard Exit, Woman’s Century Club finds a new First Hill home” by Bryan Cohen (2015), http://www.capitolhillseattle.com)