BoardingHouse Rooms for Rent

Paul Dorpat reported in the Seattle Times magazine about  a large mansion built in 1900 at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Columbia Street in Seattle's First Hill. It was a boardinghouse in the early 1900's, called The Sunset, and was managed by the progressive Emma A. Hausman, "one of the most prominent club women in the city."

Emma Hausman had purchased this residence from the Archibald Graham family in 1916 with the intent of opening "a first-class boardinghouse for particular people."

According to the 1937 tax record, this neoclassical mansion featured 27 rooms, including seven on the first floor and eight on the second, all with nine-foot ceilings. There were seven more in the attic and five in the daylight basement. The Sunset offered several rooms for rent, with ads such as this from the Seattle Times on June 2, 1917:

"Mrs. Hausman has one large room, suitable for man and wife, two businessmen or young ladies. First class in every particular..."

The mansion was demolished in 1966 to make way for new developments.

City regulations now prohibit more than eight unrelated people from occupying a Seattle residence, so the days of boardinghouses like this one are long gone - and so too, options like this for more affordable living arrangements in the city of Seattle...

Happy Investing!