[2] Murray Morgan describes a box house as "a saloon with a theater attached," which "competed with establishments offering even rougher entertainment.
"[3] Many of Seattle's box houses in the wide-open "restricted district" below Yesler Way were located in basements and operated only in the dry season, because they flooded in the wet winter.
[3] Morgan quotes a contemporary article in Coast Magazine describing the Theater-Comique, a typical box house: A nervous opium-eating individual was hammering away at a piano.
… Not a woman was to be seen in the row of seats… Around the sides of the room and at the end opposite the stage were built out of thin pine boards apartments with an opening toward the platform and a barn-like door leading into the narrow passageway along the wall.
[3] The "king" of Seattle's box houses was John Considine, originally an actor, who raised the level of entertainment and eventually became a pioneer of vaudeville.