Rainier Club

The Rainier Club is a private club in Seattle, Washington; it has been referred to as "Seattle's preeminent private club." Its clubhouse building, completed in 1904, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was founded in 1888 in what was then the Washington Territory (statehood came the following year). As of 2008, the club has 1,300 members.

The Rainier Club was first proposed at a February 23, 1888 meeting of six Seattle civic leaders; it was formally incorporated July 25, 1888. The attendees of the original meeting were J. R. McDonald, president of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway; John Leary, real estate developer and former Seattle mayor; Norman Kelly; R. C. Washburn, editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; Bailey Gatzert, former mayor associated with Schwabacher's (Seattle's and the state's most prominent Jewish-owned business of the era); A. B. Stewart; and James McNaught. Other founding members were lawyer Eugene Carr, Judge Thomas Burke, and William Allison Peters.

The club is named after British Admiral Peter Rainier. The club's logo was modeled on that of the Union Club in Victoria, British Columbia, founded 1877.

Since territorial law in 1888 did not recognize private clubs, the Rainier Club was initially incorporated as a men's boarding house and restaurant. It reincorporated January 18, 1899 as a private club under a revised 1895 state law.

The club's first home was in part of James McNaught's Fourth Avenue 22-room mansion (on the site of today's Seattle Central Library). McNaught was happy to have a tenant: he was moving to St. Paul, Minnesota to take a position as chief counsel for the Northern Pacific Railroad. The house also functioned—along with the armory at Fourth and Union—as an interim city hall after the Great Seattle Fire destroyed most of the City in 1889. This brought additional city leaders into the club.

McNaught and the club did not remain on good terms over the lease and the club relocated to the Bailey Building at Second and Cherry (now Broderick Building, after Henry Broderick). After a brief period there, from February 1893, the clubhouse was located in rooms at the then newly erected Seattle Theatre, on the site of today's Arctic Building.

The Rainier Club purchased its current property at Fourth Avenue and Columbia Street in downtown Seattle in 1903. The clubhouse, designed by Spokane, Washington architect Kirtland Cutter was completed and occupied in 1904. Seattle architect Carl F. Gould added the south wing in 1929, plus a Georgian-style entry and interior Art Deco ornamentation.

In 1899, the Club was the launch point for many members of the Harriman Alaska expedition. E. H. Harriman, John Burroughs, John Muir, Edward S. Curtis and Henry Gannett set out to Seal Island and other Bering Sea islands and to the coast of Siberia and the Bering Strait from the Club, and celebrated there on their return.