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36 stories matching durabl
- A Frontier City That Could Not Stop Building
Brick blocks, storefronts, and frame houses rose across Spokane Falls as contractors raced winter—and touted the town's future.
- Seattle’s Streets Were Still Mostly Wood—Until the Brick Came
With 750 miles platted and only 106 improved, city engineers pushed permanent pavement on Union Street and dreamed of brick from local clay.
- The First Engine: How One Machinist Built Seattle’s Heart
In April 1877, a local machinist named Mr. Bullene constructed the first engine ever built in Seattle for Stetson & Post’s new lumber mill, marking a pivotal moment in the city's industrial infancy.
- The Brick Blocks That Told Olympia It Had Arrived
In 1891, three pressed-brick buildings rose along Olympia’s business streets—and boosters read them as proof the wooden capital was becoming a real city.
- The Navy’s Checklist: Why Seattle Was Betting Its Future on Iron and Timber
In January 1902, the city compiled a massive dossier of industrial advantages—from Denny Mine ore to fresh-water wharves—to convince Washington D.C. that Seattle was the only logical site for a new Pacific naval station.
- The Great Hose Heist: How a Seattle Fire Department Was Almost Scammed by a New York Manufacturer
A peculiar dispute over fire equipment reveals the cutthroat world of late-19th-century municipal procurement, where agents played cities against manufacturers and warrants were used as currency.
- 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.
- Seattle’s Post-Panic Pep Talk: Canals, Steel and Paved Streets
On New Year’s Day 1895, Seattle’s mayor and aldermen promised economy, railroad terminals and a Lake Washington canal—and insisted the Panic of 1893 was finally fading.
- The Six-Story Mill Built on a Rock in the Spokane River
In 1883, S. G. Havermale and B. F. Davis began raising a flour mill and elevator on Little Island, betting that water power and wheat would make Spokane Falls a grain capital.
- A Legislative Committee Finds the University of Washington Packed, Broke, and Worth Building
After touring the cramped old campus and the rising new grounds between Lake Union and Lake Washington, a joint legislative committee urges bonds, more books, a smaller board of regents, and a dry zone around the university.
- The Forest Empire That Built Washington
A sweeping 1900 survey of the state's lumber industry counted billions of feet of standing timber, 250 sawmills, and $7 million a year in wages—proof that the trees, not the cities, came first.