page_title: Jacob Furth
section_title: Public-minded dealmaker
hierarchical_section_title: Jacob Furth / Public-minded dealmaker
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Seattle banker Jacob Furth.
context_page_description: Jacob Furth was an Austrian Empire-born American entrepreneur and prominent Seattle banker. He played a key role in consolidating Seattle's electric power and public transportation infrastructure, and was a member of Ohaveth Sholum Congregation, Seattle's first synagogue. Bill Speidel called him "the city's leading citizen for thirty years," adding that Furth "may even have been the most important citizen Seattle ever had."
  Clarence Bagley wrote shortly after Furth's death:
  ... while Jacob Furth was masterful, commanding and dynamic in his business affairs, he regarded business as but one phase of existence, and he was not less the public-spirited citizen and the philanthropist than he was the successful financier. Indeed, there was no period in all of his career when business so occupied his attention that he would not turn to listen to some plan for the city's betterment or some tale whereby his personal aid was sought for an individual or an organization.
context_section_description: In eulogizing Furth, Judge Thomas Burke said of him,
  Jacob Furth was an unusual man. To exceptional ability he united a high order of public spirit and great kindness of heart. It would be difficult to overestimate his work in the upbuilding of Seattle. His time, his strength and his money were always at the call of the city. In his many years of residence I doubt if he were ever once called upon for help or leadership in any public matter in which he failed to respond and respond cheerfully, liberally and with genuine public spirit.
  Some seventy years later, Bill Speidel was more succinct: "All Jacob Furth did was take a squalid little village named Seattle and turn it into a world class city. He made good on Doc Maynard's dream."
  Shortly after his arrival in Seattle, Furth (along with Gatzert and Seattle Post-Intelligencer founder John Leary) rescued the Spring Hill Water system from bankruptcy. The privately owned firm supplied the city's water. A new pumping station on Lake Washington in what is now the Mount Baker neighborhood made the system viable, doubling its previous capacity. Although the deal was initially viewed largely as a matter of public service, Furth's financial acumen resulted in a profit. After the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889, which the Spring Hill system failed to put out, Furth broke with most of the city's business interests to back city engineer R. H. Thomson's proposal for a municipally owned gravity-flow system. J.J. McGilvra was the only other member of the Seattle establishment to take this side in the fight.
  Furth assembled $150 million in bank loans after the Great Seattle Fire, and promised that his bank would make no effort to profit from the fire. In the Panic of 1893, he dissuaded the directors of his Seattle National Bank from calling in all loans. "What you propose," he said, "may be good banking, but it is not human." A rapid trip to New York City secured enough capital to buy control of the bank and weather the crisis.
caption: 1903 portrait of Furth by A. Roe Anderson
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