SEATTLE'S UNDERGROUND TOUR - PART 2

SEATTLE'S UNDERGROUND TOUR - PART 2

June 6, 1889, Seattle burned itself to the ground.
The fire burned for twelve hours, destroying the downtown. Damage was estimated at fifteen million dollars. Destroying forty-four blocks of cheaply done buildings and erasing thirty-five years of greed and planning mistakes, the fire was called a blessing in disguise. Perhaps two people died, and a million rats.
As the fire burned toward them. Sons of the Profits attempted to sell buildings. One businessman relocated three times during the .fire. June 6, 1889 was not a good day for the fire department. Their chief was in San Francisco and the water system failed. Firefighters attempted to create a fire block. Dynamiting buildings already on fire, they only spread it further and faster with each explosion.
The end of the fire seemed the end of everything, but something remarkable came out of it: a new Seattle with individuals joining forces as a community. Crisis forced them to plan a new city, together, in a big open-air meeting. (Of course, it was the only kind of meeting possible that day.)
The plan was to solve sewage and drainage problems with landfill, washing dirt from the steep hill down onto the tide flats. A gentle slope would make the sewer a one-way system. Then, a modern fireproof city would be built at a higher (and drier) level.
The plan was almost perfect. Only two things were wrong. First, it would take years to do, and second, it would cost a lot of money.
The problems made the Sons of the Profits uneasy. In order not to miss the post-fire boom, they decided to do it in reverse order.
Immediately, they returned to sites still smoldering. New buildings were designed with two front doors, at the first and second floors. Victorian ornamentation was saved for second floors. (Underground, you will see plain facades at the first floors.)
Money and people flowed into Seattle, and construction boomed. Most buildings in Pioneer Square were built in the first three years after the fire.
Finally the city government stopped shuffling papers and began moving dirt. When new buildings were in place, land had to be raised around buildings. The city raised streets by constructing a pair of retaining walls and filling in between, directing dirt and other materials in between trapezoid-shaped walls. Streets were raised from ground level eight to thirty-two feet, with new sewers and water mains laid into the fill.
(When we go underground, your feet will be at the original sidewalk level. You'll see photographs of pre-fire wooden buildings. Post-fire brick stores are on one hand, and opposite, a retaining wall extending the length of the corridor. Today's sidewalks are overhead.)
Now Seattle was getting sowewhere; up out of the mud. Modern buildings with first and second floor entrances, new streets raised eight to thirty-two feet, the future was in sight, and life went on. A Seattleite might enter a building at the first floor, leave by that door, and cross the sidewalk to the street, now an eight foot wall.
But, at every corner, a ladder stood against the retaining wall. The Seattleite would climb the ladder, cross the street, and descend a second ladder at the other side.
Seattle's population of pioneers accepted this. It was less easy for horses. It seemed impossible to convince a horse to climb a ladder. Worse, horses on street eight to thirty-two feet overhead made people more nervous than the pigeons we have on building ledges today. With high streets, drinking became hazardous. Seventeen people met death stepping from street to sidewalk.
At last the city constructed present-day sidewalks. Keystone arches and a framework of steel I-beams bridge the gap between the new streets and the second floors. Skylights were installed in the sidewalks to illuminate below. Stores open at both levels were needed to accomodate the post-fire boom, from 1889-1892. Then, in 1897, the excitement of the Klondike Gold Rush was unleashed and Seattle made $100 million outfitting (and entertaining) would-be gold miners. (The Underground Tour recommends a free visit to the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, two blocks south, on Main Street, between First Avenue and Occidental.)
In 1907, bubonic plague broke out in Seattle. An expert, Dr. Boms, was called in to fight the plague. He first condemned thirty downtown buildings, including the health department. Next, he set a ten-cent bounty on rat tails. Then concrete was poured on hardwood floors inside, and outside on boardwalks to control pests.
Afterwards, opium dens, gambling dens, and illegal lotteries operated underground, and speakeasies upstairs. The homeless would sneak underground for shelter. Anything portable and valuable was taken out of the Underground over the years. Others threw what was unwanted underground; movie crews left props.
Thanks to you, however, what was left of history is being preserved. We can still see structural aspects and try to imagine the people who created this. For your safety, please remember; no smoking, watch your step, keep little ones still, and try not to frighten the rats we see occassionally. Enjoy the underground!

SEATTLE'S UNDERGROUND TOUR

When I was in Seattle, my youngest daughter - Kristi - and I took this tour - I loved it and I know you will love reading this. Kristi has taken this tour 4 times and she said that each tour guide makes in different and you always see and hear new things.

This is part one - second part tomorrow - stay tuned - the best is to come !!!

Welcome to Bill Speidel's Underground Tour. This is an explanation of what we talk about. Until 1965 when the tour began, Pioneer Square and Seattle's history had been ignored. Bill Speidel hoped public attention could spare the historic buildings from destruction.
Out of this hope, and his skill as a local newspaperman, the Underground Tour was born. Now, Pioneer Square thrives. Not only has it been named a National Historic District of protected buildings, but it is vibrant with life.
Before we go underground, we want you to understand the people and circumstances that created it. The tour is based on a book by the late Bill Speidel called Sons of the Profits.
If our founders had a religion, it was worship of dollars that could be made quickly. November 1851 marked the arrival of the twenty-seven-member Denny party. Arthur Denny, their leader, thought that Seattle's history began with their arrival, but a man named Doc Maynard had already scouted the spot. And, there were people watching Maynard when he came, just as they later watched — and laughed — at the muddy arrival of the Denny party. Native Americans had lived here already for more than six thousand years. To them, this muddy land was the Mother of all life, and supplied them with all they needed.
Arthur Denny saw it differently. This place was maybe the least worst place on Puget Sound. Maybe he could get some money out of it: a sheer, steep cliff, two hundred feet above the beach, fifteen hunderd acres of tide flats. The trees on the cliff could be cut down, sold, and shippped out of deep-water Elliott Bay. Denny began a city of a few shacks on an island just south of where the Underground Tour begins.
The island was three blocks long and two blocks wide. Denny measured it at low time. When the tide came in, the island got smaller. (Note: Over time, the island grew larger with the landfill that eventually buried it. All of Pioneer Square south of Yesler Way, including the Kingdome, is on fill.)
Denny obviously neded help. Help came when Doc Maynard returned. David Swinson Maynard was, like Denny, from the Midwest. There ended all similarities. Denny was green and young (29 years). He wanted money. Unfortunately, few would buy his expensive, "San Francisco" priced land in Seattle. No progress, no profits. Forty-four year old Maynard knew there was more to it. For anything good to happen, he knew a real town was needed, and he went to work. He respected the native people and named the city for their chief, Seattle, Maynard's best friend. His land sold cheaply, compared to Denny's, and sometimes he gave it away. His vision invented Seattle.
A gift of free land brought Henry Yesler, and Yesler's steam-powered sawmill brought money to Seattle. Yesler also introduced a new form of government which we call corruption today. As county commissioner and three-time mayor, Yesler enlarged his bank account, cheated on his taxes, and presided over a lynching. And Seattle kept electing him.
The government surveyed its taxable population in 1887. Ten percent proved to be young women, employed as "seamstress" or "garment workers," living within a three block section of Occidental Avenue. This did seem curious in a logging town. The city appointed men to an investigative committee. After three weeks of research, they reported finding not a single sewing machine. Apparently prostitution was rife. After consulting Madame Lou Graham, chief bargaining agent for the seamstresses, the Sons of the Profits voted to let them stay and to tax them. These tax revenues amounted to 87% of Seattle's operating budget. The steam sawmill was no longer our biggest business.
Still, the sawmills were helping Seattle grow. Every day, wheelbarrows of sawdust were dumped into the streets to fill the puddles which resulted from Seattle's poor drainage. When it rained, however, horses and wagons were sometimes stuck up to their necks in this mixture of sawdust and mud. Mud puddles grew so large the city named them. At the corner of Third and Jackson, one found the Great Jackson Street Chuckhole. It was eighteen feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight feet deep. A ten-year-old boy tried out a raft he found there one day and drowned. Next day, headlines read "Boy Drowns In City Streets". If that wasn't bad enough for business, the editorial page called for mandatory swimming lessons for all six-year-olds, and the hanging of life preservers at critical intersections in downtown Seattle.
The real reason we have an underground came with the flush toilet in 1881. With a gravity-flow sewer system, toilets worked fine as long as the tide was going out. When the tide came back in, toilets became release valves for built-up pressure, flushing in reverse. They became little Mount St. Helens of raw sewage.
This is Seattle in its first thirty-five years: corrupt politicians robbing the city at every opportunity; children drowning in the streets before age eleven; prostitution our leading industry; and now toilets flushing backwards twice a day. The solution to these terrible problems came by accident.

FINAL CHAPTER TOMORROW!

YOU WILL LOVE IT!