263 results for: Politics and Politicians
Photograph
Mayor Bertha K. Landes at her desk, Seattle, circa 1927
In 1926, Bertha Knight Landes was the first woman to be elected mayor of a major American city when she became mayor of Seattle. She vowed to clean up city government, running on the platform of "municipal housekeeping." She served only one term as mayor but remained a civic leader in such organizations as the Women's University Club, the Women's…
ID Number:SHS2344
Date:Circa 1927
Photograph
Mayor Bertha Landes breaking ground for the Civic Auditorium, Seattle, November 7, 1927
Seattle Mayor Bertha K. Landes broke ground for the city's new Civic Auditorium and Stadium in November 1927. The complex, at what is now Seattle Center, was completed the following year. Mayor Landes, who served from 1926 to 1928, was the first female mayor of a major American city. The Civic Auditorium later became the Seattle Center Opera House and…
ID Number:SHS8480
Date:1927
Photograph
Mayor Robert Harlan standing by a shack at Hooverville, October 27, 1931
During the Depression of the 1930s, over 600 unemployed people lived in Hooverville, just south of downtown Seattle. There were several other such settlements in the city, and many others around the nation. The average Hooverville resident was a white, unmarried male, about 45 years old. During the booming 1910s and 1920s, he had been a logger, fisherman, miner, or…
ID Number:SHS8661
Date:1931