2025 Find of the Month Archive
Cosmos Quay
In the early 1930s, Seattle was deep in discussion about renaming Railroad Avenue after a major reconstruction project. A 1932 clerk file contains several letters suggesting designations including Seven Seas Road and Maritime Avenue, along with letter from George Root, who was spearheading a drive to give the street the name "Cosmos Quay." He explained, "The word 'cosmos' is from the Greek and stands for order and harmony on a world basis... It will attract outside recognition and business revenue to Seattle more than any term that has been suggested." Root recommended posting two 8x10-foot signs on either end of the street that read:
REBUILDING RAIL ROAD AVENUE
to be known as
"COSMOS QUAY"
"A WORLD QUAY FOR WORLD SERVICE"
...to be replaced by a 20-foot-high neon "COSMOS QUAY" sign after construction was complete.
Root felt he was well qualified to make this suggestion: "I have worked for forty years East and West, most of the time around Railway and Marine Terminals, been on the Ocean and Great Lakes, etc. I can prove that I understand this subject." Confident that the Council would support his idea, he asked "for your earnest consideration, and likely approval."
The name question was not decided right away, leading Root to contact City Council again in 1934, this time sending an 8-page letter arguing for his preferred name. He pointed out that "the name has the same number of letters as 'Quai d'Orsay' in Paris, and will become as well known." The letter continued, "COSMOS QUAY is the shortest, most authentic and comprehensive term entered for the name of the harbor improvement... [It] is by far the most suitable and expressive."
Root won a victory when, at their meeting on January 14, 1935, the Council recommended that his favored name be adopted and an ordinance be prepared to make it official. However, the legislation did not go forward, leading Root to write again that May, concerned that the delay had "allowed certain others to advance their views."
Discussion continued into 1936, when C.C. Hasselberg wrote to oppose the "Cosmos Quay" name, arguing instead for "Marine Way," which he believed "sounds right as English is spoken on the Pacific Coast, - in contrast – 'Quay' have [sic] very little usage here."
In the end, and to the disappointment of Mr. Root, the street was given a name that appeared on none of these petitions – Alaskan Way.
Legalizing horoscopes
In the midst of the Great Depression in September 1931, the United Veterans’ Club of King County sent City Council a proposed amendment to the city charter, with hopes of having it put before the voters in the March 1932 election. Their suggested amendment declared:
It is contrary to the public policy of the City of Seattle to employ married women... The marriage of any female incumbent of any office, position or place of employment in the classified Civil Service shall ipso facto constitute the resignation of such incumbent… All offices, positions and places of employment in the classified Civil Service now occupied by married women are hereby declared to be vacant and forfeited by the incumbents thereof.
The proposed amendment did give the Civil Service Commission the power to make exceptions when firing a woman would cause unusual hardship to a family, but that exception would be temporary. In cases where a married woman was found to be unlawfully receiving a salary, civil action would be brought, with penalties owing the City of double the wages received.
Some letters in support of this idea came in. The Whittier Heights Improvement Club wrote, “…married women with husbands working steadily and earning good salaries [are] employed by the city. We wish to go on record as being opposed to this and insist that you gentlemen take steps to remedy this situation by discharging all women employees whose husbands’ incomes are sufficient to support both of them.” The Gilman Park Community Club passed their own resolution stating that “all married women, whose husbands are able to support them, be abolished from the payrolls of the City, County and State, said positions to be filled by competent married men whose wives are unemployed, or by single girls with dependents.”
Two City Council resolutions were introduced that December to put a charter amendment before the voters in March. Both resolutions changed the language from specifically banning married women to barring from City employment “any married person whose spouse is employed for salary or wages.”
The Washington League of Women Voters did not think this was an improvement. They wrote, “We ask you to consider very carefully this whole question before you place such a dark-ages question before the voters of Seattle. The passage of such a measure would put Seattle so far back in the scale of common sense justice it would require years to recover its prestige among the up-and-coming cities of the United States. Nothing harms a city so much as the jeers and laughter of its sister cities and these would be ours in full measure were this proposed ordinance to pass... [It] is most decidedly unfair for a municipality to say who shall and who shall not work.”
The corporation counsel was requested to weigh in on the constitutionality of the proposed amendment on two occasions and issued opinions finding it to be valid. However, both resolutions were retired without action and the idea seems to have been dropped.