Overview

Transplanted San Francisco resident John Pinnell opened Seattle's first brothel in 1861, calling it Illahee, a term taken from the local Native American vocabulary, meaning "home away from home." Brothels would become numerous in Seattle's bustling red-light district of the late 19th century. Saloons, however, were the prime industry of early Seattle, with dozens located south of Mill Street by the 1880s.

Building History

Shortly after arriving from San Francisco to Seattle in 1861, John Pinnell (variously spelled as "Pennell") propositioned the city fathers, offering them a yearly fee of $1,200 for the privilege of opening the sawmill town's first bordello. Pinnell had been employed in promoting prostitution in San Francsico and his was the first house of ill repute opened amidst Seattle's Barbary Coast or Tenderloin District, known quickly here as "Skid Row." Skid Row was the area south of Mill Street (later to become Yesler Way), a section filled, by the 1870s and 1880s, with a huge number of saloons, flophouses, bordellos and gambling parlors.

Initially, local American Indian women were maintained as the employees, with whom Pinnell bartered food and other merchandise for their efforts. Later, he brought in women from San Francisco's dance halls and bordellos, to staff his establishment. Writers David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman, in their article "Wayback Machine: Joe Gottstein's Racing Revival," chronicled Pinnell's exploits and described Illahee as "...a large, rectangular building that housed a dance floor, a bar, and a number of private rooms where the primary business would be conducted.”" Its description suggests the floorplan of later "box houses" in Seattle's Skid Row, theatres with bars that offered women stage performers and private rooms for men to pay for drinks and sex.

Demolition

Illahee no longer stands.

PCAD id: 20008