HistoryLink Tours

Across the street from the Phillips House is the Knights of Columbus building. This solid four-story clinker brick structure ornamented with arched windows and classical dentils was home to the Seattle Council of this Catholic fraternal organization for over 100 years. Designed by St. Louis architect F. W. Bohne, Bishop O’Dea laid the cornerstone in April 1913. The Knights of Columbus celebrated the building’s completion with a ball for several hundred guests, hosted in the building’s expansive first floor ballroom, which is visible behind the eight-foot-tall arched windows. Before the city constructed community field houses and gyms, the Knights gymnasium facility in the basement was probably the best known and most used in the city. The now obsolete swimming pool, also in the basement, was last used by Coast Guardsmen during World War II. The property was sold by the Knights in 2018 and is slated for adaptive reuse. The building is a Seattle Landmark and listed in the National Register of Historic Places.