Seattle Landmarks: Emerson Elementary School (1909)

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Address: 9709 60th Avenue South, Seattle. Emerson School sits in the Lakeridge neighborhood on a hill above Rainier Beach. The current building was built in 1909 and is nearly identical to two other schools built at the same time, Hawthorne and Greenwood. All were built of brick following a design by Seattle School District architect James Stephen in the Jacobean style.

The first school on the site was a two-room wood structure, the fifth school in the Rainier Valley. In 1907, the area was annexed into Seattle and it was named Rainier Beach School. In 1908, two more rooms were added. The brick building was constructed in 1909 by contractor Alex Pearson at a cost of $42,872.

In 1914, Emerson opened the first public Kindergarten in Seattle. Attendance over the decades varied between 437 in 1929 to 900 in 1957. In 1973, the 5th and 6th grades were transferred to the new South Shore Middle School.

The school's first addition was constructed in 1930 and it was remodeled in 1969. In 2001, it was extensively renovated and expanded to accommodate the increase in the student population in southeast Seattle. Emerson has been designated a Seattle Landmark.

Two Emerson graduates of note were professional baseball player and manager Fred Hutchinson (1919-1964), who is remembered with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Seattle Rainiers baseball team owner Dewey Soriano (1920-1998).

Sources:

By Dave Wilma, April 06, 2001

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This essay made possible by:
The SCHOONER Project:
The Hon. Jan Drago
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Seattle Department of Neighborhoods

Emerson Elementary School, 2001
Photo by David Wilma