Books and Buildings: Connecting the Past to the Present Through an Employee Library

Cadillac Hotel Building in Seattle, Washington

Emma Rockenbeck

In Pioneer Square in Seattle, a block away from King Street Station, sits a three-story brick building called the Cadillac Hotel. In October of 2022, I walked into my first day of fieldwork at the Seattle unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park (KLSE), which is housed in this historic building, and was immediately struck with a sense of recognition. High ceilings perch above doorframes sitting at odd angles and irregular heights. Dark wood paneling runs halfway up the walls. The third floor has a rectangle cut away in the center, enclosed by a handrail, so that you can look below to the second floor. Straight above this cutaway is a large skylight letting in the watery Seattle sunlight. Looking around, I realized that the design of the interior feels eerily similar to the design of the 1892 Maynard Building, where I used to work as a tour guide for the Seattle Underground. This similarity led me to investigate the history of the Cadillac Hotel. It was built in 1889, only a few years before the Maynard Building. The Cadillac Hotel building has since changed hands many times. In an uncanny way, the history of this building mirrors the history of KLSE, and the history of the books in the KLSE employee library.

My mission at KLSE is to organize the employee library. The KLSE library currently holds a collection of books specifically related to KLSE, as well as books left over from the Pacific West Regional Library (PWSE). The Cadillac Hotel building previously housed the PWSE, which acted as a hub for all the national park libraries in the region. A full-time librarian worked there, cataloging books that were sent to them by employees from parks in the Pacific West Region. When PWSE was dissolved, many books remained on the shelves, interspersed with KLSE books. Effectively, this means that there are two libraries coexisting in a chaotic harmony on top of each other.

Charles Beall, the superintendent of KLSE, is enthusiastically heading the library cleanup project; his help has been invaluable to my mission. My main task is to catalog books into the NPS LIBRIS library system. This includes both new books and PWSE books that need to be moved into the KLSE collection. The process goes like this: Charles reviews a stack of books to make sure they are a good fit for our collection, then I enter them into NPS LIBRIS. After a batch of books is cataloged, I run a label report, print a set of labels, and then attach labels to the spines and card pockets on the inside front cover of the books. Finally, I enlist the help of other on-site Northwest Youth Corps interns to shelve the books. When I have questions, I ask the incredibly knowledgeable and helpful staff at the NPS Library Information Management Program for assistance.

Emma Rockenbeck and Charles Beall at KLSE

Kelseyanne Johnson

As I went through the first pile of books in October, I was puzzled. Some of them made sense as part of the KLSE collection – books about the Klondike Gold Rush, Seattle history, Salish Sea and Seattle area Native American culture and history, local Asian-American history, training materials for interpretive park rangers, natural history, and natural science of the Pacific Northwest. Others did not make as much sense to me at first glance. For example, I was delighted to find Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Building Community: a Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks*. These are old favorites of mine, but I was unsure if they fit the scope of collections at KLSE. So, I asked Charles about the range of collections for the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, to see if he could shed light on the collection limits for the library.

The scope of collections for the museum was based on the original mission of KLSE. In 1976 Congress established Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. This park included three units in Alaska and one in Seattle, and was intended to “preserve in public ownership for the benefit and inspiration of the people of the United States, historic structures and trails associated with the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898.” This created a management challenge due to the park having sites in both the Alaska and Pacific West regions of the National Park Service. Eventually KLSE administratively separated from the Alaska units, giving rise to new responsibilities and opportunities, and altering the original scope of library collections that seek to benefit KLSE employees and partners throughout their work.

KLSE moved into the historic Cadillac Hotel building in 2006. The first floor and basement level of the building is the public-facing visitor center and Klondike Gold Rush Museum. The second floor houses the Pacific West Region Lands Office, the Washington Office of the Park Cultural Landscapes Program, and NPS’s cooperating association – Discover Northwest. On the third floor are the offices for KLSE staff. This includes the interpretive rangers and staff who run the museum, the staff who run youth and community outreach programs, interns, Charles Beall, and sometimes Brooke Childrey, the museum curator for Mount Rainier National Park, who supports KLSE. The third floor also houses the library.

NYC Intern Emilio Gonzalez Shelving Books

Emma Rockenbeck

The Cadillac Hotel was badly damaged by the 2001 Nisqually Earthquake, so Historic Seattle led a project to save the building, eventually resulting in the NPS leasing it for public and administrative use. The history of the hotel makes this building the perfect home for KLSE for multiple reasons. The hotel opened in 1890, and many of the early residents were young men working as railroad porters, musicians, plumbers, waiters, clerks, and salesmen in the young and growing city. Beginning in 1936, the hotel was managed by Kamekichi Tokita and his family. They converted most of the clientele to long-term residents; these were mostly retired laborers who subsisted on Social Security and pensions. In 1942, however, the Tokita family along with other Seattle area individuals of Japanese ancestry, were forcibly removed from their home and incarcerated in the Minidoka War Relocation Center. This connection to the Tokita family is especially poignant, because KLSE is responsible for the National Park Service’s role in the collaborative management of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, a unit of Minidoka National Historic Site. Because of this web of partnerships and historical connections, KLSE has incorporated the history of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans into its museum programing. The museum now has a thoughtful and heartbreaking exhibit dedicated to this story. KLSE’s involvement with the local Asian American community does not rely solely on past events – the Cadillac Hotel sits near the edge of Pioneer Square and adjacent to Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, a neighborhood for which the park prioritizes community engagement. KLSE also has a collaborative relationship with the Wing Luke Museum of the Pacific Asian American Experience – a National Park Service Affiliated Area, and the first Smithsonian affiliate in the Pacific Northwest.

Because KLSE is in the heart of Seattle, the largest and most densely populated city in the Pacific Northwest region, the National Park Service recognized the role KLSE could play in connecting youth and families to their public lands. Seattle is surrounded by large national parks in all directions – North Cascades National Park, Olympic National Park, and Mount Rainier National Park – however, many of the people who live in Seattle are removed from these remote and wild places. For years KLSE has served as a connection between these national parks (and other public lands) and the urban center of Seattle. KLSE manages the Outdoor Recreation Information Center, a community resource inside the REI Seattle flagship store that offers trip planning assistance for safe and enjoyable public lands recreation throughout the Pacific Northwest. KLSE also participates in the Trails & Rails partnership with Amtrak by managing volunteers who educate travelers on the natural and cultural history that is visible on train routes between Seattle and Portland and Seattle and Wenatchee.

The mission of KLSE as a park is expanding and growing. As a result, the parameters Charles and I are considering when organizing the employee library must expand as well. Charles is excited to cultivate a collection of resources that focus on community building in order to support KLSE employees and partners in their engagement with Seattle area communities. The library is now incorporating books about leadership, education, race, gender, class, oppression, and the history of marginalized communities in Seattle (especially books written by people from these communities) into the KLSE Employee Library. I am excited and honored to be a part of this on-going project.

Article written by Emma Rockenbeck
for "A Day in the Life of a Fellow" Article Series
National Park Service - Workforce Management Fellow
in Partnership with Northwest Youth Corps (NYC)

If you live in or are visiting Seattle, the Klondike Gold Rush Museum is well worth a visit!
Use the following links to learn more about the organizations and resources mentioned in this article:
Klondike Gold Rush Museum
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial
Outdoor Recreation Center in REI
Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
Trails & Rails

*Author's name "bell hooks" has been intentionally left in lower case