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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1854 | 1 |
| 1861 | 2 |
| 1862 | 1 |
| 1872 | 8 |
| 1876 | 33 |
| 1877 | 24 |
| 1878 | 25 |
| 1879 | 1 |
| 1880 | 4 |
| 1882 | 6 |
| 1883 | 48 |
| 1884 | 22 |
| 1885 | 31 |
| 1886 | 22 |
| 1887 | 13 |
| 1888 | 32 |
| 1889 | 87 |
| 1890 | 13 |
| 1891 | 81 |
| 1892 | 131 |
| 1893 | 155 |
| 1894 | 113 |
| 1895 | 130 |
| 1897 | 2 |
| 1898 | 2 |
| 1899 | 21 |
| 1902 | 1 |
| 1903 | 35 |
| 1904 | 48 |
| 1905 | 6 |
| 1907 | 7 |
| 1908 | 18 |
| 1909 | 43 |
| 1910 | 4 |
| 1911 | 8 |
| 1912 | 3 |
| 1914 | 3 |
| 1915 | 5 |
| 1916 | 10 |
| 1917 | 5 |
| 1923 | 2 |
| 1924 | 2 |
| 1925 | 2 |
| 1928 | 1 |
1,211 stories matching block
- The Town Votes on a New Schoolhouse
Citizens of Aberdeen decide on the location for a $25,000 schoolhouse, with dueling donations from prominent boosters.
- Beacon Hill's Streetcar Gap: Children Walk Miles While the Company Stalls
Residents petition the aldermen to force the Union Trunk Line to run cars to its promised terminus.
- The Great Statehood Gamble: How Washington Territory Bet Its Future on a Coin Flip
In February 1889, Congress passed the 'Omnibus Bill' granting statehood to four territories simultaneously. For Seattle and Tacoma, this wasn't just political news—it was a high-stakes gamble that would determine their city limits, tax structures, and place in history.
- The Rapid Transformation of Pioneer Square
A weekly ledger of building permits reveals a city under construction, capturing the final boom years before the Great Seattle Fire of 1889.
- The Clay Under Seattle Built a Million-Dollar Industry
King County clay works turned local deposits into firebrick, paving brick, sewer pipe and architectural terra cotta—winning federal tests and employing hundreds of men.
- The Westside Railway Deal and the Councilman Who Didn't Read It
Olympia's council weighed a cheaper route through C. M. Moore's block to reach the Westside Railway—until one committeeman admitted he had signed the report blind.
- Seattle Rising: The Blocks Going Up Where the Fire Burned
Dexter Horton & Co. reopens on the same corner it held before the great fire, as new brick blocks, houses and excavations push out across the young city.
- Spokane Falls Fire of 1889 Destroys Thirty Blocks
A detailed account of the massive conflagration that leveled thirty blocks of Spokane, leaving thousands homeless and causing an estimated $12 million in damages.
- Great Northern Moves to Seize Downtown Blocks
The expanding railway network files suit to condemn an entire city block, displacing residents and businesses in the Whitechapel district.
- The Last-Second Injunction That Saved a Seattle Building From the Railroad
Judge Langley cleared the way for demolition, then a federal mortgage-holder's suit stopped the axes at the Colman block.
- The Boy Who Vanished Into the Dirt
A contractor’s chilling account of a six-year-old who fell into an open trench and was buried alive—only to be dug out just in time.
- The Boomtown Ledger: Seattle’s Economic Surge in 1884
A detailed survey of Seattle’s rapid 1884 expansion reveals a city bristling with new brick blocks, bustling steam mills, and a skyline reaching toward its future.
- Seven Lots, Three Judges, and a Railroad's Sky-High Bill
With jurors suspected of being bribed, three judges took over the Great Northern condemnation case—and the valuations for a few lots near King Street swung wildly.
- The Little Yellow Bank That Outlasted the Great Seattle Fire
Dexter Horton’s one-story stone office at Commercial and Washington survived the 1889 conflagration—and became the foundation of a downtown banking landmark.
- The State Germ Lab in the Burke Block
Seattle's new bacteriological laboratory tested city water, hunted typhoid and tried to make diphtheria antitoxin—while its doctors covered the rent.
- The Battle for the Paving of Pacific Avenue
Tacoma business owners hash out a heated, two-hour debate over whether to use locally sourced fir blocks or imported vitrified brick for the city's main street.
- Tragedy at the Baxter Block
A 5-year-old boy falls to his death from the third-story porch of a residential block at Yesler and Fifth.
- The $150 Lot That Became a $150,000 Block
A Seattle pioneer cashes out a Second Street property he held through fire and rebuilding, offering a simple recipe for fortune: buy early and hold on.
- The 3,249-Acre Map That Laid Out Seattle’s Waterfront
In 1895, King County appraisers filed the first full plat of Seattle’s tide lands—reserving broad rail avenues, harbor blocks and a street grid that still shadows the modern waterfront.
- The Boomtown That Stretched Itself Thin
A local builder’s report from 1889 reveals how rapid development and land speculation transformed Snohomish into a fragmented town of 'additions,' while warning of an impending labor downturn.
- Walla Walla’s 1884 Sales Pitch: From a Tent Store to a ‘Metropolitan’ City
A reprinted commercial sketch boasts of wheat, railroads, gasworks and thousands of souls — and lets slip the town’s whole origin story, from a tent on Mill Creek to the great fire of 1866.
- The Price of a Courthouse
King County officials weigh costly real estate deals while taxpayers are struggling with mounting debt and devalued county script.
- The Transformation of the Butler Block
A historic Seattle landmark is being converted into a modern hotel, promising the latest in electric light and steam heat.
- The Drummer’s Deed: A Tale of Lost Blocks and Mutual Recrimination
A traveling salesman thought he’d scored a bargain on Seattle real estate, only to discover his deed was for the wrong lot—and his seller had no idea either.
- The Schoolhouse That Wasn't: Seattle’s Bureaucratic Battle Over Public Education
In 1877, a local dispute over the construction of a new school in Helltown reveals the early struggles of civic infrastructure and the tension between taxpayer demands and administrative delay.