Horizon - Institutional Archives Project - Seattle, WA

Horizon House - Institutional Archives Project - Seattle, WA

Job Title:

Consulting Archivist

Organization Name:
Horizon House

Location:

Seattle, WA

Stipend: $7500.00

Closing Date for Application: 9/25/2025, 11:59 PM PST

Start Date for Project: 11/3/2025

Estimated End Date:
January or February 2026

The general scope of this archival consultancy is to review the Horizon House existing collection, consult with Horizon House staff and residents, establish a new, broader collecting plan and the structure to accommodate it, set best practices, and to work with the University of Washington Special Collections team to develop the process by which Horizon House institutional archival material will pass to the custody of the University of Washington Libraries.

Project Context:

Horizon House is a non‑profit Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) that was founded in 1961. Located on First Hill, in downtown Seattle, Horizon House is a campus of three high‑rise towers, with a fourth to open in 2029.

The original Horizon House opened in 1961, the year before Seattle’s Century 21 World’s Fair, in the midst of a decade of remarkable transformation of metro Seattle. That decade, 1955‑1965, marked revolutionary innovations in Seattle civic, political, racial, environmental, gender, technological, cultural, and artistic expressions and experiences. As a non‑profit retirement community, in an urban setting, Horizon House consciously intended to weave compassion with capitalism, to create a diverse and inclusive body of residents who were actively engaged in their own aging and in the fabric of the city.

The hundreds of residents at Horizon House run their own programs, from live music to self‑governance, and have done so for nearly 75 years. And the Horizon House model has proven successful, continuing into the 21st century, when many similar non‑profit CCRCs have either filed for bankruptcy or sold to private equity investors.

The newly framed Horizon House archives should document this biography for the use of residents, but also of scholars, journalists, and interested members of the general public. The custody and care of the Horizon House archive at University of Washington Special Collections will provide intellectual and physical control, and public access.

Position and Project

Summary:

Horizon House is seeking an experienced professional archivist to accomplish three tasks, working with the pertinent residents and staff members at Horizon House and with pertinent staff at the University of Washington, Special Collections.

First, the consulting archivist will survey the existing Horizon House archives – herein designated as the “core collection” – which have focused on the records and activities of the Residents’ Council and its subcommittees. For instance, the Residents’ Council meeting minutes collection begins in 1961 and continues to the present and into the future. This core collection has been surveyed and organized by the standing Archives Committee.

The consulting archivist will have recommendations about organization and retention.

Second, the consulting archivist will work with corporate and Residents’ Council representatives to determine the scope of a new collecting plan for the Horizon House archives that is broader than that of the core collection. This may include minutes of the Board of Trustees, selected records of the Horizon House corporation (like annual reports), project‑oriented collections (like development of the North Tower), digital material (like oral history interviews and certain programs), photographs, and ephemera (like the weekly newsletter of Horizon House).

This second project task will involve issuing a call for new contributions to meet the broader collecting plan, and require the consulting archivist to devise a management plan to process this new archival material and an archival structure in which to organize it.

Third, working with the accessioning and processing archivists at the University of Washington Special Collections, the Horizon House consulting archivist will establish a process to transfer and re‑house the Horizon House collection to the University of Washington…