The Kline Galland at 100
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, The Jewish Sound
When the Caroline Kline Galland home first opened on the shores of Lake Washington in 1914, the ramshackle farmhouse held seven inmates, as they were called, all of them poor, infirm, single Jewish men with no other place to go.
“It is my desire that the home be so constructed and managed that it may bring to the lives of the aged men and women who shall be domiciled therein the greatest degree of contentment and happiness in their declining years,” wrote Kline Galland in her will, which, upon her death in 1907, set in motion the wheels that would become the institution that celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.
These men — women would be admitted later — were required to help with the building’s upkeep and to adhere to a strict set of rules that included who could visit and set times for when the lights must be turned out in the evening. Should the “inmates” break these rules, they’d be summarily removed. And where would they go?
“They could care less,” said Josh Gortler, the Kline Galland’s now-retired CEO, of the matrons who ran the facility.
Gortler, who now manages the Kline Galland’s endowment from the 10th floor of the Summit at First Hill, the independent and assisted-living facility that opened in 2001, arrived in Seattle in 1968 to lead the organization and serves as its de facto historian.
While Kline Galland has always strived to live up to the wishes of its first benefactor, it was not always easy. In the late 1920s, a zoning request to expand to 25 residents resulted in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with Kline Galland. By the end of the 1940s, the number of beds had reached 45, but it soon became clear that its original mission of housing the poor and infirm would need to change to suit the community’s needs.
“What happened if you had money?” asked Gortler. If “you had a house or you had any possessions, you had to give it to the trust” that managed all of the finances of the agency.
In the 1950s, a consultant working with the advisory board recommended a new facility and a move in the direction the rest of the nation was going with nursing care: Less custodial, and more social work and psychiatric intervention.
“The recommendation was that there needs to be a new facility to move into from this sheltered home,” Gortler said, “into a more progressive approach for caring for the elderly.”
The state agreed. In 1960, licensors called Kline Galland “an antiquated, inadequate facility,” according to their report, and refused to renew its license. After pushback from the Jewish community, plus the launch of a $1.1 million capital campaign, the home stayed in place and a new, modern 70-bed facility opened in 1967.
Spearheading that effort was local businessman and philanthropist Sol Esfeld, whose mother had been a longtime resident of Kline Galland.
Any resident of the nursing facility today can recall Esfeld’s name — it graces the wing that made up the expansion after the new facility quickly filled to capacity.
“The impact of the home is so widespread that nearly everyone in our community will be touched sooner or later,” said Esfeld, who also led the $3.6 million expansion campaign that brought Kline Galland’s capacity to 140 beds.
Esfeld is also the man who first invited Gortler to move to Seattle to become the agency’s new director. Gortler, a Holocaust survivor, had at the time been working for an organization in New York that served refugees. A staffer at the United Way in Seattle “discovered” Gortler when he presented a paper on “serving elderly people in a new type of a setting, combining housing and recreation and social services,” he said.
United Way courted Gortler, but he turned them down. A member of that hiring committee tipped Esfeld to Gortler’s ideas and the two met at a hotel in New York. Gortler agreed to a two-year commitment — after being approved by both the Kline Galland advisory committee and Seattle Trust, which still managed the finances — and “apparently things did work out, and I’m here, 45 years later,” he said.
The Kline Galland that Josh Gortler came into — 70 residents, a $250,000 budget, hardly any administrative staff to speak of — is far different from what exists today.
“There was no bank account. On
Fridays I would take all the bills for the week, I would take a sheet of paper with all the employees, how many people would work, and how much they should get paid,” he said. “The bank paid the check, the bills, and then the next Monday I would pick up the checks for the employees and we would hand them out. It was strictly controlled by the bank.”
In the 1970s, Kline Galland finally freed itself — mostly — from the management of Seattle Trust.
“The bank didn’t want to let go,” Gortler said. But the bank also refused to sign on the loan to expand to 140 beds. “They didn’t want to sign the contract because they were afraid they were going to get stuck with this project if it was going to be a failure.”
Eventually Esfeld and businessman Robert Block worked out a deal that the trust would continue to own the land, and the agency, as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, would manage the operations. Kline Galland signed a 99-year lease and the expansion was built.
“We said it was going to fill up in two years,” Gortler said. “Within six months the place was full.”
Today, Kline Galland owns the land outright.
Kline Galla nd expanded programmatically during that time as well. In the early 1970s, Gortler presented a grid to his board laying out the community-wide options for Seattle’s seniors: Those who lived at home could find activities at the Jewish Community Center’s Golden Age Club, those who needed some help could find a group facility such as Council House, and those in need of daily care would find a space at the Kline Galland.
That document served as the blueprint for Kline Galland’s future, though it took close to a decade for the plan to begin to bear fruit with the introduction of the Morris Polack Day Center. After its introduction in 1980, local philanthropist Polack created a base fund of $1 million to sustain a program for seniors to live at home while receiving necessary services on-site a few days a week.
Gortler’s blueprint also sowed the seeds for the transitional care unit, which opened in 2000 and allows for post-operative patients to spend time in rehabilitation before heading home. And eventually, that plan set in motion the idea of a residential facility for Jewish seniors who can live independently or with some assistance.
That facility, the Summit at First Hill, opened in 2001, with financial commitments from the who’s who of Jewish Seattle’s donor base: Sam and Althea Stroum, Jack and Becky Benaroya, Sam Israel, Ray Galante, who ultimately chaired the building campaign, and many others.
“We looked all over,” Gortler said. “We looked at Eastside properties, we looked in Renton, then this property becomes available.”
The patch of land, owned by broadcasting magnate Patricia Bullitt Collins, was purchased on very favorable terms with payments taken “as money becomes available,” according to Gortler. But then a strange thing happened.
When Gortler was about to deliver the final check — an $800,000 payment — Sam Stroum decided they should ask
Collins for a $50,000 donation as well.
“I told her that anybody who moves in here who ever runs out of money will not be moved out, that we will subsidize them, and we’re going to do it by creating an endowment,” Gortler said. “She says, ‘Mr. Gortler, tear up the check.’…Sam fell through the floor.”
That $800,000 started the Kline
Galland Foundation, an endowment that Gortler said is doing “exceptionally well” and paid for the recent top-down remodel of the Kline Galland home. In 2006, Gortler handed over the reins to its current CEO, Jeff Cohen, who has been continuing Gortler’s expansion of services.
That so many people in Seattle’s Jewish community give of their time and money to the Kline Galland is in part a recognition that, as Cohen puts it, “eventually everyone’s going to need one of the Kline Galland’s services,” but also a tribute to loved ones to make sure they live comfortably in their later years.
“The community is proud of what they’re doing,” Gortler said.
Click here to learn about how Kline Galland is moving forward into its next century.