Today we visited the dark and sordid underground of Seattle. That was fun to learn of the craziness of the founding folks of this town...I mean city.
I bought the book called
Sons of the Profits that tells of the MORE than interesting roots and underhanded happenings.
The underground formed after the big fire of 1889, which burned down 32 blocks of the city. The city decided they needed to raise all of the streets up a story higher because of tide and drainage and sewage problems. So it took years for the city to build vertical walls down both sides of the street (every street) and fill them. The scene is likened to a pancake being turned into a waffle, with each city block being inside the dimples, and the roads being the ridges. Business owners could not wait for this construction to be completed and went on to rebuild in the dimples. This created high streets and low sidewalks. There was no way to cross a street, so wooden ladders were set up on the walls to the streets. You climb up one and down another to cross the street. After many years, new raised side walks were built at the street edges and to the second floors of all the buildings. Now there was a whole world underneath that is still there today.
There were many ...let us call them seamstresses, who would happily hem men's pants for a fee (if you know what I mean). The taxes on these businesses contributed 87% of Seattle's income in those days!
Here are some pictures of the underground and some of the buildings above that world.
This street is a floor above the original street.
The wall is the side of the new street.
The structure to support the 'new' sidewalks is arches of brick and steel beams. This is the underground view.
To light the underground, they used glass skylights. And yes, the skylights are walked on to this day on the sidewalks. THAT is a whole other sordid story from the days of the "seamstresses". There was a group of men who spent time watching skylights from underground, and a group of women who spent time walking on them above. Many had their prices written on the soles of their shoes.
Lovely!
A piece of the wooden sewer line.
And stuff.
One of the early shoe stores which I think became Nordstrom's.
A totem pole was stolen from a tribe and erected here. It burned at some point so the tribe was contacted to make a new one. They said 'Sure! $5,000." Seattle paid it. When the check cleared the tribe sent this word, "Thank you for paying for the original totem, and a new one will be $5,000." Seattle paid it again.
There is a story of a pair of men who bought side by side properties. One man started erecting a building and finished it. A day later, his neighbor informed him that he built six inches over the property line and should sell him the completed building to solve the problem. Instead the builder carefully removed bricks and shortened the building. When he finished, the neighbor/scammer gave up and built his own building sharing the wall of the first building. When HE finished, the first guy informed him that when he corrected his early mistake, he moved his building's wall back 12 inches. Now the scammer/neighbor was 6 inches over the property line himself!
Guess who ended up with both buildings?
There are stories about toilet geysers because tides and flushing schedules often did not mix. Toilets were raised higher than the floors to help with this problem.
This was the tallest building west of the Mississippi in its day.
Dark and scary, there are many ghost sightings reported through this section.
The er... seamstresses. One is a cross stitcher.
And here is the best plastic surgeon in town...
I had my first Starbuck's coffee today, very close to the Starbuck's mothership. I LIKED it!!! It was in the 60's today and chilly. Sorry guys...just the truth. I learned that there are over 400 Starbucks in the city.
Here are a few fun signs.