Wilson’s Modern Business College
Seattle, Washington
1895-1942 (?)
E-Travel
Seattle newspapers Post-Intelligencer and Star, along with Ranche and Range (North Yakima) all carried items of news from and ads for the school. The Landmarks Preservation Board of the City of Seattle posted the 2016 Nomination form of the Wilson Modern Business College Building for inclusion on the list.
This 1912 invitation to commencement demonstrates the fine art of penmanship taught by Professor Wilson. Image from https://archives.scranton.edu/digital/search/searchterm/Wilson's%20Modern%20Business%20College
History
Judson P. Wilson, writing supervisor for Seattle city schools, opened Wilson’s Modern Business College on February 6, 1895, a date celebrated annually. The school offered courses of study in bookkeeping, shorthand, typing, penmanship, grammar, and arithmetic. The first year produced three graduates. By the second year, enrollment reached 104 students. Since the college operated on a 365-day calendar and offered night classes, students could finish classwork and enter the work force in a year or less.
W.M.B.C. accepted students with an eighth-grade background, offering “common branches” courses such as grammar and spelling as well as modern languages. But as demand rose, it offered more business-specific courses in law, geography, and telegraphy. At one point it offered normal courses to train business teachers.
Enrollment numbers continued to rise, reaching 500 by 1902 with more than 250 graduates in 1929, the year of Wilson’s death. W.M.B.C. was one of the few business colleges that actually held commencement ceremonies. An Alumni Association was formed in 1901. By 1904 the school had an employment Bureau.
Wilson students enjoyed many of the standard college activities. They had a Modern Literary Club and an Athenaeum with musical and literary Activities. Dramatics students presented The Confidential Clerk in 1896 and held a debate in 1897. Newspapers noted regular dances, banquets, receptions, and other entertainments.
Associated with Racine’s Western Institute, W.M.B.C. continued to operate for a time after the death of its founder. The Landmarks Preservation proposal notes, “The college appears to have gone out of business by 1942.”
Part of the graduating class of 1903. Wikimedia image. Soubor:Graduates_of_Wilson%27s_Modern_Business_College,_Seattle,_1903_(MOHAI_13130).jpg
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Wikimedia image of the Wilson's Business College Building. Note the Gothic Main Portal.
Bricks and Mortar
Classes began in one room of the Collins Building at 518 Second Street in downtown Seattle. Before the end of 1895 Wilson announced that he had added three rooms. Within a year, the college occupied the entire top floor. Ads noted ten large rooms with skylights and 104 outside windows. The assembly room measured 65 x 100 feet. The students were provided with individual oak desks.
In 1908, 1919, and 1925, as enrollment increased, Wilson moved his school to ever larger quarters in the downtown Seattle area. Finally in 1928 the college moved into the Wilson’s Modern Business College Building, a new four-story Collegiate Gothic style building on Fifth Avenue, built especially for it. While the ground floor contained retail shops, the college used the upper three floors for classrooms, with a 60x108 foot auditorium taking the entire second floor. It is now called the Griffin Building, housing commercial offices. It met criteria for Historical Preservation in 1916
Sports
School colors: In 1901 these were listed as Lemon and Nile Green
In 1896 students at W.M.B.C. formed an athletic association. At the first Field Day held that year, they contested seven track and field events.
In 1898 W.M.B.C. advertised for a football coach and fielded a team from 1898 to 1900. Essentially a high school team, they scheduled games with Seattle, Tacoma, Whatcom, and Everett high schools, and possibly with the Everett Athletic Club. In these games they enjoyed little success. Their one foray into college opposition resulted in an11-0 loss to the University of Washington in 1898.
Newspapers reported in1901 that the students had formed a ladies’ basketball team, which played games in 1902 against Tacoma and Ellensburg high schools. In 1919 a women’s team became charter members of the Seattle Community League. Male students had baseball and basketball teams through the years, basically as members of the city commercial leagues. President Wilson proudly noted that W.M.B.C. teams were composed of Bonafide students.
In 1918 a women’s tug-of-war team from WMBC participated in the Seattle Girls’ Victory Carnival. W.M.B.C. reached the semi-finals.
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