Lusty Lady photograph collection

Collection

Identifier: 1000_029

Scope and Contents

Photographs in the collection depict employees along with interior views of the club and exterior views of the club’s marquee. The interior construction photos are believed to show construction of the private viewing rooms within the club. The creator of the photographs and the majority of people in them are largely unknown. Some photographs are labeled with staff names.

Dates

Creation: circa 1996

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open and available for use.

Conditions Governing Use

Biographical / Historical

The Lusty Lady opened in 1985 at 1315 1st Avenue. First Avenue was home to a variety of adult film theaters, clubs and bookstores throughout the city’s history. As the neighborhood began to change with the restoration of Pike Place Market in the 1980s and the opening of the Seattle Art Museum in 1991, the Lusty Lady served as a mainstay. It offered private booths to watch peepshow films and live nude dancers and was well known for the humorous and risqué messages displayed on its marquee. The 2008 recession and subsequent fall of Washington Mutual led to significant downturn in foot traffic downtown. That, paired with more easily accessible content available online led to the eventual closure of the business in June 2010.

Full Extent

.21 Linear Feet (1 box) : 71 photographs

Language of Materials

English

Metadata Rights Declarations

License: This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Creative Commons license.

Additional Description

Abstract

Photographs showing construction projects at Lusty Lady, interior and exterior views of the building and candid shots of employees.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Collection was acquired by purchase.

Processing Information

Acknowledgement of Harmful Content
The Seattle Public Library Special Collections Department is committed to creating an inclusive archive that documents the history of our diverse communities in a respectful manner. Our collections include historic materials that may contain images and outdated language which can be harmful due to issues such as racism, colonialism, sexism and homophobia. This content can provide important insight into the creator and context of the historic materials but can also reveal hurtful biases and prejudices.

We may decide to use or retain harmful language in our description when the terms have been used by the creator(s) of the materials to describe themselves or their community; when we have reused description created by the donor; when we have transcribed information directly from the materials; and when using national standards such as Library of Congress Subject Headings, which allow for standardized searching and retrieval of records. When including language from the original material in our finding aids or descriptions, we will indicate that this material comes directly from the original item by putting the language in quotes or prefacing it with a note that says the description is transcribed from the item or provided by the creator.

We will continually review our finding aids to identify harmful language and encourage you to contact us at specialcollections@spl.org if you find language that causes concern.