A box house was a combination of low-class theater and

brothel A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub par ...

, found in western

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It offered light entertainment "such as magic acts, singing, dancing,

minstrel show The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people spe ...

s," as well as sexual services.Summary for 423 2nd Ave Extension / Parcel ID 5247800595
Department of Neighborhoods, City of Seattle. Accessed online 19 November 2007. Box houses were an antecedent of American

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

Meaning

Murray Morgan Murray Cromwell Morgan (1916–2000) was an author and historian of the Puget Sound region. Throughout his life he was also a writer, journalist, and political activist. He was a history teacher at Tacoma Community College. Early life Murray Morg ...

describes a box house as "a saloon with a theater attached," which "competed with establishments offering even rougher entertainment."Morgan 1960, p. 119. Many of

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

's box houses in the wide-open "restricted district" below Yesler Way were located in basements and operated only in the dry season, because they flooded in the wet winter. Others were built over the tideflats and would dump over-rowdy customers into the water through trap doors. Morgan quotes a contemporary article in ''Coast Magazine'' describing the Theater-Comique, a typical box house:

A nervous
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-eating individual was hammering away at a piano. … Not a woman was to be seen in the row of seats… Around the sides of the room and at the end opposite the stage were built out of thin pine boards apartments with an opening toward the platform and a barn-like door leading into the narrow passageway along the wall. In each room was an electric torch button which communicated with a bar set up behind the stage. The boxes were unlighted… In these boxes were women, one in some, more in others. … Women with dresses eachingnearly to the point above their knees, with stained and sweaty tights, with bare arms and necks uncovered halfway to their waists

Some of the box houses were not as "low" as this: at least one, run by a supposedly titled Englishman featured women in evening gowns and humor at the level of the ''

double entendre A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...

''. The "king" of Seattle's box houses was John Considine, originally an actor, who raised the level of entertainment and eventually became a pioneer of vaudeville.Morgan 1960, p. 120–128, 144 ''et. seq.''

Notes

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References

* Murray Morgan, ''Skid Road'', Ballantine Books (1960). American culture Entertainment in the United States Theatrical genres Vaudeville theaters Sex industry in North America