The building as it looks today

By Ayla Nye/UW News Lab

With an affordable housing project set to demolish the building, a December landmarks board hearing could determine the future of a 21st Ave property the city calls “a pivotal location in Seattle’s African American heritage.”

The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections has taken the unusual step of delaying the development of a 49-unit apartment building just off E Madison to determine if the 108-year-old building should be protected on the grounds that the property holds historical and cultural significance, according to the SDCI.

The Madison Inn Work Release, formerly known as the Phillis Wheatley YWCA building, is up for a landmark nomination, a designation that could protect the building from demolition and many types of construction.

Stephanie Johnson-Toliver, president of the Black Heritage Society of Washington State, voiced her concern about the planned building demolition.

Johnson-Toliver is a fourth generation Seattleite. Her family moved to Seattle in 1913 and she has owned her house in the Central District for nearly 30 years. In 1945, her mother was a member of the Phillis Wheatley YWCA Girls Reserve.

“The Phillis Wheatley was created to meet the needs of Black women and children,” Johnson-Toliver said. “They helped shape young women’s opinions and attitudes and we’re socially uplifting them with education and recreation,” she said.

“Established from the ‘Culture Club’ in 1919, this site has been a central hub for black intellectual life, community gathering, black social justice and legal defense groups,” the nomination prepared for the city reads. “It initially functioned as a meeting point and community center, significantly contributing to the social fabric of Seattle’s African American community.”

Ben Maritz is the current owner of the Madison Inn property and the founder of Great Expectations, an affordable housing developer. Maritz has been developing the property since he bought it in July of 2020.

“We went through a whole process, including design review, and received the master use permit, I think, over a year ago,” Maritz said.

Corrine Carter Guild members at Mardi Gras celebration — 1954 (Image: The Black Heritage Society of Washington State)

The planned housing project, known as Taxus House, is a proposed 49-unit apartment building with predominantly one-bedroom units that will each be about 325 square feet. Maritz said that between 20% and 25% of the units would be reserved as affordable housing.

“This is a workforce housing project. It’ll have rents that are affordable to people earning between 40 and 80% of the area’s median income. So, you know, housing for people who have minimum wage jobs up to people who are classified workers at the school district or people working in restaurants. Basically normal people in Seattle,” Martiz said.

Martiz says he was unaware that the property held any historical or cultural significance when he began development.

“We had done a fairly extensive amount of research before about the site and its history. We were familiar with its use as a prison work release site. We even knew about it being a nursing home before that, but we didn’t know anything about it being connected to the YWCA,” Maritz said. “Neighbors who have lived there for their entire life had no idea the building was even being nominated as a landmark.”

The building is currently slated for demolition. If the property is granted landmark status, development would be halted.

“It would be a financial disaster for my small business,” Maritz said. “It would be a loss probably in excess of $2 million. It’d be devastating.”

In many nominations where the property’s owner doesn’t initiate the process, someone with interest in a property — sometimes community groups, rarely, a city department — comes forward to propose the city pursue a landmark nomination based on the property’s cultural or historical significance. After this, the city usually informs the property owner and allows them to submit their own nomination.

“In this case, that never happened,” Martiz said. “They did not inform us. They called us about three weeks before the hearing and said, ‘Hey, we’ve nominated your building, and there’s a hearing in three weeks.’ There was also no community group that stepped up and said, ‘We think this should be a landmark.’”

Children outside Phyllis Wheatley YWCA, Seattle, ca. 193 (Image: The Black Heritage Society of Washington State)

The SDCI said that they decided to pursue the nomination because they were acting on information provided to them by the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

While the DON declined an in-depth interview, they provided a one-sentence statement in regards to the city’s decision to pursue a landmark consideration for the property.

“Department of Neighborhoods staff elevated a community member’s inquiry about the proposed demolition of the subject property to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI), given that the property appeared to have cultural significance,” the statement said.

Johnson-Toliver, who originally reached out to DON, said that the former Phillis Wheatley YWCA building played an integral role in fostering and uplifting the Black community in the Central District.

“The community was starting to grow after the turn of the century. By the ‘40s, more and more Black people were coming that needed to have that social and education skill-building embrace from the community to lift themselves,” Johnson-Toliver said.

The landmark hearing, originally set for September 4 has been pushed back to December 4th in response to a request for more time from Maritz.

“The bottom line for us is we will use this time to propose what we think is a better solution, to make sure that we can achieve objectives of celebrating the history of the YWCA in this location and not block much-needed affordable housing in the Central area,” Maritz said.

“We think that there are other better approaches like perhaps naming the building after this piece of history, or putting a plaque on the building,” he said.

Maritz said the city’s actions might scare away other small developers that would provide much needed housing for the area.

“Landmarking is a totally broken system in Seattle and largely exists to block development,” Maritz said. “This particular landmarking process has been really problematic, even in the context of a larger problematic system.”

Johnson-Toliver and Martiz have shared a few virtual conversations about other ways to appropriately honor the property’s significance that doesn’t involve landmarking.

“I am not necessarily saying we need to save that old house. But what we do need is to acknowledge the historic significance and value of that space,” Johnson-Toliver said.

“So if the development could show some appreciation, more than just a plaque on a wall, but being really intentional about how they are investing in the history of our community and the historic character within our community,” she said.

“I’m open to discussion, and would love to hear what he is proposing,” Johnson-Toliver said.

Maritz is still unsure why the city is so adamant about pursuing the landmark nomination.

“There is a time for landmarking these kinds of projects, and that time is at the very beginning of the process, not at the very end. I can’t imagine that this is the right outcome for the city of Seattle. I don’t think this is what the neighbors want, what anybody wants,” Maritz said.

You can learn more about the nominations and how to comment on possible protections at seattle.gov.

The Journalism and Public Interest Communication News Lab at the University of Washington gives advanced journalism students an opportunity to build a dynamic clip portfolio by reporting for any of 70 client news outlets in the greater Seattle area. CHS is proud to work with young journalists and feature their work.

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