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Troy Laundry
HistoryLink.org Essay 10199
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307 Fairview Avenue N
Architects: Victor W. Voorhees, 1927, and Henry Bittman, 1944, 1946, with subsequent further additions.
Troy Laundry was one of numerous commercial laundry operations in the
South Lake Union/Cascade neighborhood after about 1918. In-home washing
machines and (later) dryers did not become common until circa the late
1940s. Like other urbanites, many Seattle residents sent weekly bundles
of their dirty clothes and linen to commercial facilities. Horse-drawn
delivery wagons, and later trucks, picked up the bundles and returned
their contents washed, starched, ironed, and folded. By 1948 Troy was
the largest such laundry in the Pacific Northwest.
The concrete structure is clad in patterned brickwork and with
white terra cotta trim. The white terra cotta woman's head atop the
parapet is thought to represent Helen of Troy. Unlike Helen, the
thousands of (mainly) women who labored in hot commercial laundries,
moving heavy wet loads amidst the reek of unwashed clothing, their hands
cracked from constant exposure to caustic solvents, came and went
largely unheralded. On March 11, 1996, Troy Laundry was designated a
City of Seattle Landmark.
By Paula Becker, September 25, 2012
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