Hiram Gill

Hiram Gill
Gill as Seattle mayor c. 1911
Mayor of Seattle
In office 1910–1911
In office 1914–1918

Hiram C. Gill (August 23, 1866 – January 7, 1919) was an American lawyer and two-time Mayor of Seattle, Washington, identified with the "open city" politics that advocated toleration of prostitution, alcohol, and gambling.

Gill was born in 1866 in Watertown, Wisconsin. His father, Charles R. Gill, a lawyer and Civil War commander, later served as Wisconsin's attorney general. In 1889 Gill graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School and moved to Seattle, where he worked first as a waiter at a waterfront restaurant. That June, the Great Seattle Fire reconfigured Seattle. Gill soon became (as he had been during law school) a stenographer in a law firm, entering practice himself in 1892 and soon entering politics as a Republican. As a lawyer, he defended saloonkeepers and brothel owners.

He was elected to the city council in 1898, reelected in 1900, defeated in 1902, but elected again in 1904, after which he held onto his seat, serving three years as council president before running for mayor in 1910 on an "open town" platform.

At that time, the great divide in Seattle politics was between "open town" and "closed town" factions. The town had risen to prosperity by "mining the miners" of the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush, and then became a player in the emerging Pacific trade. A prosperity based on miners and maritime trade inevitably carved out a large role for brothels, bars, and gambling dens. Open town advocates like Gill and Seattle Times publisher Alden J. Blethen argued for the economic benefits of an "open town" while trying to keep these "vices" mostly confined to the area below Yesler Way, a major east-west road through what is now known as Pioneer Square. One of the most prominent figures on the other side of the debate was Presbyterian minister Mark Matthews, who already in 1905 had faced off against Gill, accusing him of "condoning vice"; other opponents included other church groups, but also progressives, prohibitionists, and women's suffragists.