The Bellevue Women’s Club, also called the Bellevue Study Club and the Bellevue Business and Professional Women’s Club, was in operation from the 1920s through the 1970s. Article II of the club’s constitution reads:

“This club is constituted for the purpose of fostering and developing [the] best possible social and civic relations between residents of this district and to interest them in all matters and movements that will tend to make living conditions therein clean, healthful and attractive.”

Josephine Godsey, a charter member and the first secretary of the club, gave more details in her 1978 oral history.

Josephine Godsey: Wildwood Park [in Bellevue], of course that was free to everyone around the city of Seattle. All kinds of people were coming over here; we just didn’t know who they were or anything about them. So, there was no place for Bellevue young people to have a good time at all, unless they go down to the park. Go down, you know, and join the strangers.

And so the club house was there and. … they started renting the clubhouse out. …And lots of times there’d be gangs and drinking. Well, the Bellevue women just didn’t like it too much, so they though well, we’ll organize and we’ll put on some real nice dances for Bellevue people. So that’s what we did.

Interviewer: So that was the beginning…

JG: That was really the beginning of the Bellevue Women’s Club. To develop something right here locally where we could control things.

Heritage Corner is a feature in the Bellevue Reporter. Material is provided by the Eastside Heritage Center. For more information call 425-450-1049.