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Overview

Illinois-born businessman Dexter Horton arrived in Seattle among the second party of Euro-American settlers to reach the city in 1853. This group, known as the "Bethel Party" included Horton and his wife, Hannah Eliza (Shoudy) Horton (1828-1871), Thomas Dickerson Mercer (1813-1898) and his wife, Nancy Brigham Mercer (1816-1852), Rev. Daniel Bagley (1818-1905), his wife, Susannah Rogers Whipple Bagley (1819-1913), and their son, Clarence Bagley (1843-1932) and about 30 others. In his first years in town, Horton would work at Henry Yesler's first lumber mill in Seattle, and assist Thomas Mercer's moving company.

By the mid-1850s, Horton had partnered with Arthur A. Denny (1822-1899) in a business selling surplus goods from ships. Horton expanded his store to include general merchandise, operating as a trusted dry goods business until 1866, when he sold the store to Henry Atkins and moved to San Francisco, CA. Horton gained such a reputation for honesty, that customers would give him their valuables for safe-keeping. He would tag and log each precious item and then hide it among the store merchandise. Horton returned from San Francisco in 1870 equipped with a new safe, ready to serve his new bank's customers. (See Junius Rochester, HistoryLink.org, "Horton, Dexter (1825-1904)," published 04/22/1999, accessed 08/02/2018.)

Building History

Merchant-turned-banker Dexter Horton (1825-1904) opened his first bank in this one-story, wood-frame building that he replaced in 1875 with a studier building with coursed ashlar walls that stood until the Great Seattle Fire of 06/06/1889.

Building Notes

The bank was known as "Phillips, Horton and Company" in 1872. In that year, Seattle had one other bank listed in the The Puget Sound Directory and Guide to Washington Territory, 1872,the Puget Sound Banking Company, on Commercial Street. (See The Puget Sound Directory and Guide to Washington Territory, 1872, [Olympia, WA: Murphy and Harned, 1872], n.p.)

Demolition

Dexter Horton razed his first bank location and built his second, masonry building on the same lot.

PCAD id: 18087