With the emergence of the movie industry in the early twentieth century, the Belltown area came to be the home of myriad film-related businesses, and indeed the area was soon known as Seattle's "Film Row." Among the numerous Hollywood-based film-distribution shops were several that boasted private screening rooms where the region's theater owners could review new films and decide which to book into their venues. Perhaps the most legendary was Sub Pop Records' sold-out "Lame Fest" on June 9, 1989, which spotlighted rising grunge stars Mudhoney, TAD, and Nirvana. Attached to it was the 1,400-seat Moore Theatre at 936 2nd Avenue - the venue for many theatrical musicals and concerts ever since. Among them was James Moore, whose Moore Hotel at 2nd Avenue and Virginia Street opened in 1907. Finally, between 19, AFM Local 76 built an all-new Musicians' Union Hall at 2620 3rd Avenue, where it was based until moving to 3209 Eastlake Avenue E in 2009.Īnticipating the crowds expected to descend on Seattle during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909, various local businessmen set plans in motion to accommodate those visitors.
Soon Seattle's musicians' union would acquire a new headquarters, the Musicians' Club of Seattle, in an old house between Virginia and Lenora streets at 2025 4th Avenue. Meanwhile, in 1909 a new armory was built in Belltown at Virginia Street and Western Avenue, and in time it would be made available for dances and other community events. 76, chartered by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Nearly a decade later, in 1898, the union was recast as the Musicians' Mutual Protective Union No. 30 was officially admitted to the national organization on December 17 that year. Their Mutual Musical Protective Union No. The union's charter members held their initial board meeting on November 2, 1890, in the Armory Hall on Union Street between 3rd and 4th avenues. In the wake of Seattle's Great Fire of 1889 - after much of the city's core had burned and the rebuilding effort begun - local musicians began discussing the need to join together to improve their negotiating stance versus the proprietors of various theaters and dancehalls. Stewart).Ä«elltown is bordered by Seattle's central business district to the south, Elliott Bay to the west, the Denny Hill regrade area to the east, and to the north - since 1962's Century 21 Exposition (the Seattle World's Fair) - the music-venue-rich Seattle Center campus, which since 2000 has included the city's music museum, the Experience Music Project (EMP), later renamed the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP).
As the neighborhood was platted, William Bell named various streets in honor of his family: Bell, Virginia, Olive, and Stewart (for Olive's husband, Joseph H. But Bell's family played a key role in the tiny community of settlers, and his daughters Olive (1846-1941) and Virginia (1847-1931) sang duets as the Bell Sisters, providing some of the earliest musical entertainment in the muddy village. Relatively isolated because of the terrain, Bell's property didn't enjoy the rapid and profitable development that saw a central business district arise on Boren and Denny's land to the south. Beginning in 1897 it would be flattened in the Denny Regrade project initiated by city engineer R. Bell's claim was on a narrow bayside shelf that backed up to Denny Hill, one of Seattle's steepest. Boren (1824-1912) and Arthur Denny (1822-1899) grabbed sections bordering what would develop into Seattle's old-town Pioneer Square neighborhood, but Bell went north.
Toward the end of the following winter, a few of the men decided to scout out other spots on Elliott Bay to make land claims. Among that group of settlers was William Nathaniel Bell (1817-1887). On November 13, 1851, the Denny Party pioneers arrived from Portland, Oregon, by ship, landing at Alki in what is now West Seattle. For more than a century this area of once low-rent urban residences, light industry, and labor-union offices has also been the home base for many outposts of the music biz and entertainment industry, including theaters, ballrooms, taverns and nightclubs, recording studios, record labels and a record-pressing plant, band-rehearsal spots, and, indeed, the longtime site of the headquarters of Seattle's Musicians' Union, AFM Local 76. Perhaps less recognized is the wide-ranging musical action that has taken place in the Belltown/Denny Regrade neighborhood just north of the city's central business district. Several of Seattle's distinct neighborhoods are closely associated with their rich musical histories, including the Jackson Street area's early jazz scene, E Madison Street's funky R&B past, and downtown's long-standing theater and nightclub activities.