Born: 1854, United States (assumed)
Died: 1938
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from HistoryLink.org, in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
St. Nicholas School was a private nonsectarian girls’ school founded in 1910 and located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The school was named to honor St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, but had no religious affiliation. Patronized by many of Seattle’s leading families, St. Nicholas School strove to provide its students with an education that would both prepare them to pursue higher education and equip them to proceed comfortably into Seattle’s upper class society. St. Nicholas School graduated its last class in 1971, and thereafter merged with the previously all-male Lakeside School (founded in 1919), making that school coeducational.
Early History
Eda Buddecke (1858-1926) was the school’s first headmistress, assisted by her sister, Fanny Buddecke (1854-1938). The Buddeckes, who had been raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, and subsequently taught in Virginia and Maryland before moving to Seattle, founded the school at the behest of a group of Seattle parents who wanted their daughters to have the benefit of a first-class nonsectarian college-preparatory education. St. Nicholas was intended to offer Seattle girls an East Coast education, without the need to leave their homes to get it. The school’s motto was “Nihil est virtute amabilus,” or “Do noble things, not dream them all day long.” The school’s namesake, St. Nicholas, was a bishop in what is now Turkey during the fourth century. St. Nicholas was said to favor girls who lacked dowries and to help them arrange suitable marriages by leaving them bags of gold.
A 1960 Seattle Times article about the school’s 50th anniversary mentions in passing that a longtime secretary, Pauline Bolster (1887-1975), recalled that the school “actually began in the ballrooms of the George F. Fischer home, and then the R. D. Merrill home” before the Buddecke sisters became involved (“St. Nicholas Will Mark…”).
In early January 1910, Eda Buddecke purchased the property at 712 Broadway N (now E) between E Roy and E Aloha streets in Seattle’s tony North Capitol Hill neighborhood. She paid former owners George B. Cole (ca. 1861-1943), Lily A. Cole (ca. 1861-1944), and Mary C. Finch (ca. 1853-1936) $7,600. Seattle architect Charles Bebb (1856-1942) designed a two-story school building consisting of two floors of classrooms, later topped by a third floor gymnasium. The school’s nine teachers welcomed its first pupils (83 of them) on September 29, 1910. Student government at the school was organized in 1914.
In 1917, the Buddecke sisters sold St. Nicholas to a group of parents — members of Seattle’s leading families, including the Blethen, Bloedel, Henry, Merrill, Padelford, and Stimson families. The school was incorporated at this time, and Edith Dabney (ca. 1882-1967), a teacher at the school since its inception, became headmistress. In 1919, the school became affiliated with a boarding facility at 520 Boylston Avenue N (now E), while remaining primarily a day school. The boarding option was discontinued after two years.
St. Nicholas School was the first of several strongly female-centric institutions that would eventually define the two-block radius around the school. In 1921, Nellie Cornish (1876-1956) moved her Cornish School, which offered lessons in art, music, dance, and theater, into a new building at 710 E Roy.
In 1925, the Woman’s Century Club constructed a brick clubhouse at 807 E Roy Street, and the Rainier Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution built their chapter house at 800 E Roy Street. Like St. Nicholas School, these organizations served and were supported by the wealthy families living nearby.
St. Nicholas Girls
Emphasis at St. Nicholas was placed on academics, but also on proper behavior, and on giving back to the community. Lambda Theta Upsilon, a service sorority to which all students belonged, was founded in 1919 and provided a framework for charitable activities benefiting the Seattle community. St. Nicholas students were also trained to appreciate cultural activities and to organize and manage a gracious home environment. For St. Nicholas girls, rolling bandages for the Red Cross and raising funds for Children’s Orthopedic Hospital went hand in hand with learning to host teas and formal dinner parties. These lessons were firmly reinforced at home.
The 1922 St. Nicholas Pen Points, a combination yearbook and literary publication, includes a page addressed “To Mothers of Girls” that sums up the school’s objectives: “It is the ideal and purpose of the St. Nicholas School for Girls to develop the inherent possibilities for growth in the girls whom the school is privileged to guide through their impressionable years. To develop strength and sincerity of character, to prepare girls to acquire through the later years of college an understanding of life and its responsibilities that they may become capable home makers and mothers, and intelligent citizens — these are our objectives” (p. 3).
Especially in the school’s early decades, St. Nicholas students were the daughters of the men who led Seattle’s business community and the women who led, funded, and facilitated the city’s cultural and benevolent aspects. Young women educated at St. Nicholas were encouraged to actively give back to their community, to use their wealth for good rather than rely on it for privilege. Over the school’s 61-year history, St. Nicholas graduates consistently distinguished themselves as leaders, both in the professional world and as tireless community volunteers.