Born in Ware, Massachusetts, on October 19, 1868, Bertha Knight grew up from 1873 in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was a younger sister of Admiral Austin M. Knight. After attending public and private schools she entered Indiana University and graduated in 1891. She then taught high school in Worcester until her marriage in January 1894 to Harry Landes, with whom she moved that year to Rockland, Maine, and the next to Seattle, Washington. In Seattle she became active in civic and women╒s club activities. She was deeply involved in organizing Red Cross work during World War I and was a member of the Minute Women of Washington, a wartime speakers bureau. She served as president of the Woman╒s Century Club of Seattle in 1918╨1920 and of the Seattle City Federation of Women╒s Clubs in 1920╨1922. In 1922 she was elected by a large vote to the Seattle city council. In the same year she organized the Women╒s City Club.
In 1924 she was reelected to the city council, which subsequently chose her as its president. When Mayor Edwin J. Brown left Seattle to attend the 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City, Landes became acting mayor. She promptly opened a vigorous campaign against the vice and gambling that had given the city its ╥wide open╙ reputation. Her campaign included relieving the police chief of his job. Mayor Brown reinstated the chief on his return, but lines were drawn for the next city election. In March 1926 Landes defeated Brown and became the first woman to serve as mayor of a major American city. Her administration was a measured success, but her higher plans for eliminating the patronage system, instituting a city manager government for a unified city and county, expanding the public park system, and ending the traditionally open vice were largely frustrated. In 1928 she was defeated for reelection. In later years she served as president of the Washington State League of Women Voters and in 1930╨1932 of the American Federation of Soroptimist Clubs. She died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on November 29, 1943.
