Bertha Knight Landes

Bertha Knight Landes c. 1926

Bertha Knight Landes (October 19, 1868 – November 29, 1943) was the first female mayor of a major American city. Landes served as mayor of Seattle, Washington from 1926 to 1928. She was born in Ware, Massachusetts to Charles Sanford Knight and Cordelia Cutter. Her father, a veteran of the Union Army, moved the family to Worchester in 1873. She attended Indiana University, where she received a degree in history and political science in 1891. After three years of teaching at the Classical High School in Worcester, Massachusetts, she married geologist Henry Landes, with whom she had two children and adopted one. She and her family later moved to Seattle.

She served on the Seattle City Council 1922–1926, the last two years as council president, before becoming mayor.

She lived in the luxury Wilsonian Hotel in Seattle's University District in her later years, taking University of Washington sponsored students abroad to the far east before, in flagging health, she moved to Pacific Palisades, California. She died in Ann Arbor, Michigan at her son's house in 1943. She was interred at Evergreen Washelli Memorial Park. Today, the largest meeting room at Seattle City Hall is named in her honor.

External links

• Municipal Archives exhibit
• American National Biography Online at www.anb.org
• [1]

Political offices
Preceded by Edwin J. Brown	Mayor of Seattle 1926–1928	Succeeded by Frank E. Edwards