About Compass Center
Our Legacy
"With your support, we will continue to make this Mission a true home for many. We will serve our brothers here in all ways possible to answer the loneliness in their hearts, their bitterness, failure and futility by the message of the Friend of all. As we are able we will continue to make improvements in our Compass home which will enable us to better translate your caring and Christ's caring for those adrift. 77 South Washington Street is our lighthouse from which brightly beams our Father's mercy. You have had a part in building this lighthouse; together we can make its light shine ever brighter."
Sincerely and gratefully yours,
Otto R. Karlstrom,
Founder of The Compass Center
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The Karlstroms
The Compass Center was founded in 1920 when a remarkable couple from Sweden began a little mission in Seattle - part chapel, part employment agency, part reading room, part language school, part soup kitchen, part crash-pad for the stranded. In some ways, the Compass Center would be almost unrecognizable to them today. But the faith of Reverend and Mrs. Alva Karlstrom was so expansive that they might not be surprised to know how many thousands of people their "Lutheran Compass Mission" would help over the years.
The Compass Center has changed, and changed, and changed. This is the true vision of our founders - never set in their ways, they looked at the changing needs around them and they faithfully responded. Like the Karlstroms, we would never have predicted the latest transformation to the Compass Center. Thus, when the Compass Center ventured into low-income permanent housing, developing the original wing of the Compass Center building in Pioneer Square into 23 studio apartments, we honored the visionaries of this agency by naming this facility The Karlstrom Apartments.