Seattle Now & Then: Norway Hall

Exploring Seattle’s and Ballard’s early history.

Seattle Now & Then

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: The now century-old Norway Hall at the corner of Boren Avenue and Virginia Street opened in 1915, on May 17, Norwegian Independence Day. (Courtesy, Nordic Heritage Museum)

NOW: Since the Sons and Daughters moved on to larger clubhouses, their first Norway Hall has given shelter to the Painter’s Union and dance clubs, including the City Beat Disco in the 1980s and the Timberline in the 1990s, and now as Cornish School’s Raisbeck Hall.

Once upon a time dragons wagged their long tongues from open jaws on the roof of Norway Hall in Seattle’s Cascade Neighborhood.  The hall’s sponsors, the Daughters and Sons of Norway, respectively the Valkyrien and Leif Erikson Lodges, dedicated their new hall in 1915, on May 17, Norwegian Independence Day.  

Dennis Andersen, one of our distinguished historians of Northwest architecture, and himself of Norwegian descent, notes that the hall’s architect, the…

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