ONE OF SEATTLE's oldest 'hoods – Youngstown – grew up around William Pigott's Seattle Steel Co. mill which was built in 1905. Immigrant new-hires settled into company-owned homes & rooming houses, & a rough-&-tumble working-class business district – including a church, grocery store, pool hall, & tavern – arose along 24th Avenue S.W. (today's Delridge Way in West Seattle).
By 1914 neighbors had formed the Youngstown Improvement Club as a social group & a means for helping lift their area up to the middle-class standards of West Seattle in general. They founded a clubhouse & held many community events there over the decades. Even as a Seattle-native I knew none of this history until I began researching a new discovery: this poster which advertises a dance on January 1, 1938. Now, where are all the fotos of that toe-tappin' band: Grantier's Harmonizers?