2336 15th Ave S
Seattle, WA, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Turner-Koepf House (Jefferson Park Ladies Improvement Club)

Statement of Significant:

The Jefferson Park Ladies Improvement Club is significant to Seattle and the Beacon Hill community as a building which has served slightly more than fifty years as headquarters of one of the oldest women's social and civic organizations in the city. The fact that the building, which dates from 1883, is believed the first residence constructed on Beacon Hill is incidental to the property's primary importance as a long-time, general-purpose community center for the Jefferson Park district. Organized between 1910 and 1912 with, among other objectives, the idea of bettering conditions for the working women of the district, the Jefferson Park Ladies Improvement Club was formally incorporated in 1916. After the First World War, the Ladies Club realized its goal of establishing a permanent headquarters. In 1923 the Turner-Koepf House on 15th Avenue South was acquired, and from this site the group raised funds and implemented innumerable betterment projects for the Beacon Hill community. The club’s name was taken from nearby Jefferson City Park, the Improvement of which the club actively promoted since its inception.
Although sources are in conflict as to the year he came to Seattle, Edward A. Turner, a native of Maine, had arrived on the scene by 1875. It appears that he began work in the city as a newspaper reporter and publisher of the Daily Tribune, which was absorbed by the Daily Intelligencer in 1879. Turner married Estelle Roberts, also of Maine, as early as 1877, but it was some years before he cleared and developed his four-acre tract on wooded Beacon Hill south of town for residential purposes. Local directories indicate that he had turned to a career in real estate by 1882. For a number of years before his death in 1899, Turner was a principal in Turner, Engle and Lewis, Real Estate, Loans and Insurance Company. In 1883 he built what is believed to have been the first home on Beacon Hill. A simple Italian Villa with a neatly fenced yard, it was so far from designated streets that its location in the 1885-1886 directory was simply stated: "ridge 1 3/4 miles south of post office". The basic means of overland travel to Seattle from Beacon Hill at this time was a circuitous wagon road. On the basis of directory listings, it seems that Turner and his wife did not remain long on their Beacon Hill property, perhaps no more than about five years.
In 1898 the house was acquired by Frederick Koepf, who was for many years chief draftsman in the City Engineer's office. It was Koepf who modified the house with a tower, areas of variegated shingle siding and verandas to conform to the more up-to-date Queen Anne Style. When the City graded 15th Avenue South to the summit of Beacon Hill around 1907, Koepf's house was moved across to the east side of the new thoroughfare. The weathervane atop the polygonal tower still carries evidence of Koepf's occupancy in the form of an initial "K". Upon Koepf's death, in 1920, his widow remained in the house for another year, and in December 1923 the house and two adjoining lots were acquired by the Jefferson Park Ladies Improvement Club for a permanent headquarters.
The basis of the Ladies Club was a group of eight women who began meeting, by some accounts, in 1910, coincidentally the year women's suffrage was achieved in the state of Washington. By 1912, certainly, the group was organized "for the purpose of developing social and civic interests on Beacon Hill and near Jefferson Park." The park, located on 15th Avenue South about eleven blocks south of the Turner-Koepf House, had been held by the city for municipal use since 1898. A reservoir, city stockade, or prison, a nursery and greenhouse were among early improvements on the property. At the height of city-wide efforts to implement the Olmsted System of Parks, Boulevards and Playgrounds, the Ladies Club helped to promote development of Jefferson Park as a public golf links in accord with designs prepared in 1911 by Olmsted Brothers, the distinguished Boston firm of landscape architects It is interesting that among the projects which the club undertook in its early years was the holding of parcels of land for park development. Fittingly, a member of the Jefferson Park Ladies Improvement Club was among the first women to be named to the Seattle Board of Park Commissioners.
Some of the club's other early efforts included ridding the community of its pest house and agitating for construction of safe steps and sidewalks on the steep hillside which workers descended to reach factories at the foot of west Beacon Hill. By the time of its formal incorporation with seventeen members in June, 1916, the Ladies Club was working in cooperation with neighborhood school authorities to remedy various educational problems. These activities predated the organization of Parent-Teacher associations. The club was instrumental in establishing a kindergarten for the district, and it sponsored improved street lighting and litter clean-up campaigns.
As early as 1915, the club had acquired a lot for a future clubhouse site, but the First World War intervened, and all effort was concentrated on war-related drives and Red Cross work. Fund-raising for a clubhouse was resumed after the armistice, however, and the present property was ultimately secured in December, 1923. Refurbishing the interior of the Turner-Koepf House was carried out in the first three months of 1924 with the assistance of J. D. Duncan, local carpenter who had helped build the house for E. A. Turner in 1883. From the day of its opening, "Beacon Hill Club House," as it was frequently called, was made available to numerous organizations, including the Campfire Girls, Boy Scouts and other youth groups. By such activities as bake sales and bazaars, subscription drives, and such fashionable social events as dancing and card parties, the club financed it enterprises and maintained its property for the benefit of the community as a whole. The traditions of the club persist to the present day, which finds club members seeking the formation of a full-fledged public library branch for Beacon Hill.