Our Stories
A collection of testimonials from folks who have made a Home in The Madkin.
The first time I thought about living in the MadKin I was seeking safe affordable long term housing, because my home had been sold to a developer who decided to demolish the house and build condos. It was 2014 and rents were high everywhere but my friend loved her apartment and most importantly it was affordable. I didn’t take the apartment I viewed but got on the waiting list for future openings.
The next time I needed to move (due to an unaffordable rent increase) I viewed and rented my current apartment 104. I’ve been here 5 years this July, and it’s the best home I’ve had in the 20 years I’ve lived in Seattle. We were all impacted by the passing of our landlord Fally Tyson. The sadness at the loss of such a kind person mixed immediately with the fear of the unknown future of our homes here in this beloved old building. I’ve come to feel like a part of a small community at The MadKin within my bigger Seattle family.
My hope is that we can save our homes from sale to developers who may demolish this old jewel. Whatever the outcome of this process I will be grateful for everyday that I was a tenant of The MadKin.
Sara Johnson
This is Blu Meadows Maurice Mitchell Mills-Culpper. I am a tenant at Madkin Apts. I have lived in the lower level which is perfect for me. Hoping we can turn the tides. I like many other tenants are dealing with this building being sold – and possibly having to move.
I like it here, perfect location – safe neighborhood – and the history of this building, Dizzy Gillespie the great Jazz trumpet resided here, Rosa Parks visited here – so as a musician this place is sacred to me.
…There’s many more reasons why … we shouldn’t have to be be uprooted.
Blu Meadows Maurice Mitchell Mills-Culpepper, Guitarist (Learn more about Blu Meadows here)
I rented at the Madkin in 2005 and lived there off and on for 15 years. When I first saw it, I was struck by how beautiful the building was – the deep reds and dark woods, the ornate details mismatched but authentic. I didn’t meet Fally right away, but once I did and I realized that he owned the building and lived there as well, I felt safe and secure with him. He faced the people to whom he rented daily, and he had a work ethic and sense of pride about what he did. He wanted to lift people up, and he had a familiar sensibility to him (I’m from Texas and he’s from Georgia if I understand correctly).
I lived in that first apartment for several years, went through a breakup in it, my best friend moved in, I travelled with it as my home base, and when I returned my best friend’s girlfriend had moved in. They lived there for the next 15 years, got married, and began raising a child there. The three of us lived together for some time, I got involved in another relationship, moved out, went through a breakup, and moved back in, this time in another unit with another friend. I started community college, transferred to a university out of state, moved out, graduated, and moved back into yet another unit. From that apartment I started graduate school for nursing, walking to Seattle University each morning for class. In between all my comings and goings, I had recommended to several friends and coworkers to live in the building, and they were taken in the same way I was, how Fally’s personal touch made it a special place.
What we saw was the promise of how things could be. We saw someone who took it upon themselves to do good with their work and means. Fally was gentle but firm, he knew that being a landlord wasn’t for the faint of heart, yet he also knew that being distant, unavailable, and money-focused wasn’t right. For him, that wasn’t the Christian thing to do. Instead, he did work himself, met people who lived in the building, trusted them, and got involved in their lives (as messy as that sometimes is). He knew the people that lived around him, their beauties and their flaws. A far cry from the experiences of many renters elsewhere.
I kept coming back for the history, beauty, familiar faces, petty arguments, romances, and lazy summer days in the shade of the stoop on the cool marble steps. It had done something that few buildings can do, it had built a community. My friends and I posed for photos on Christmas day, standing on that stoop. We knew our neighbors and connected, shared food, and were involved in each other’s lives. Fally created the conditions for this to arise and nurtured it. Alongside this, as a part of all this (as if it weren’t enough), he gave homes, jobs, rules, and structure to some who struggled with mental illness and substance use disorders. He certainly didn’t have to do this. He had many offers to cash out, to take a substantial sum and walk away – detach, be less involved, to get away from the messiness of knowing the people that lived around him, their beauties and their flaws.
As I’ve learned more about the building’s history, it’s no wonder this sense of community bubbled to the surface; no wonder the former owners trusted Fally with the building. The people who were the stewards of this building before Fally seem to have shared this love of engagement with those around them. This sense of closeness emanates from the deep reds and dark woods, the ornate details mismatched but authentic. It draws you in if you observe it deeply.
We need these spaces, these bastions of history and community. The Madkin is a part of the tapestry of the city that needs to be preserved. And the best way to do this is to entrust it to the people who live there, who know their neighbors, who are involved in each other’s lives, who make friends with each other, and who will be careful stewards of this beautiful place.
Jeremy Bang
The Madkin is our home. I do not want to see any of us lose our home. We need to preserve the memory and legacy of Fally Tyson. He has done well on the upkeep of the building, and we need affordable housing.
I do not want to see it fall into the hands of a greedy predatory developer who will demolish it. I hope it will be preserved as an historical land site, it was built in 1904.
There is nothing wrong with the Madkin. We thank Deb * for keeping the doors open and available for us. We thank Fally Tyson for all that he has done for us. God bless him.
Jackie, Jack O’Connor
I’ve enjoyed my time here at the Madkin… it has provided a longtime home that cannot be replaced in today’s rental market. Some of us have been here for decades. We span a wide range of ages and incomes, and some of us would be hard pressed to find anything nearly as affordable – on Capitol Hill or elsewhere in the city…
Liz Tyson
My first memory of The Madkin was when I ran into my friend Jeremy on a lunch break at the Central Coop back when I was working at Group Health, and he invited me over to hang out.
He and his roommate, our mutual friend Atticus, were making Kombucha in the kitchen, and at some point their friend Jack Wilson, emerged from the old dumbwaiter door in the wall playing guitar. At that moment I just thought “This place is awesome!”
In late 2009 I moved in with Jeremy as my roommate, and I’ve lived here ever since then.
The Madkin is a place I love for a multitude of reasons: the beautiful old architecture, living in a building that also is home to many of my friends, knowing that my rent was going to an owner who was long time Central District resident instead of some heartless real estate corporation, and having a rent that said owner kept affordable, with only very modest and infrequent increases over the years to keep up with property taxes and maintenance.
That last point has been particularly important to me and other tenants here, not just because the below market rate is generally good for us financially and allows us to stay in the city, but because myself and many current and former tenants in the building are or have been involved in Seattle’s many creative communities.
The Madkin’s low rent was one factor that helped me when I quit my day job back in 2012 and started my freelance video post production business. I’ve been running that business for 10 years now, although there have been some rough patches. The roughest of course has been the COVID-19 pandemic.
I was lucky that I had a job that was already 90% work from home, but my roommate moved out right when lockdown began as a precautionary measure. Ever since, I’ve been paying the full rent of my 2 bedroom apartment, but I was only able to absorb that cost because of the Madkin’s affordable rent. I shudder to think what would’ve happened if I was living in one of the many overpriced apartments in the city.
But it’s not just me making movies in the building. Albums have been recorded here by the bands Rat Queen, Temple Canyon, and His Many Colored Fruit, and the Madkin is home to Grammy winning musician Blu Meadows. A former comedian roommate of mine started a monthly show in 2013 called The Tiny Baby Talk Show, in which he recruited me to play ridiculous villains. The show’s audience grew with each successive show, and in 2015 we performed at Bumbershoot, something I honestly never thought I would get to do.
Seattle is known for its art & music, and places like the Madkin foster people in those communities. But increasingly it seems that this reputation is less and less a tangible vibrant reality, and more so a marketing gimmick for new so-called “luxury” apartments.
You can’t just monoculture a city by catering to rich people with tech jobs and not expect things to fall apart. People in arts communities (and indeed anyone not in the tech sector) cannot succeed by creating work and starting businesses if they have to always ‘run to stand still’ to keep up with what has become, in most of the city, an outrageous – and considering the rise in homelessness – a frankly immoral cost of living.
I hope that whoever buys the building keeps these things in mind and proceeds thoughtfully, and doesn’t treat us merely as a resource to be exploited.
Justin Minich