The Unsafe City: A Local Builder Battles Seattle’s Negligence
After the city left a decaying, debris-filled bulkhead to collapse onto his building site, one developer takes his grievance to the public—and hits a wall of municipal bureaucracy.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
J. G. Kenyon has taken exception to the opinion of the corporation counsel regarding a dispute over a bulkhead at the corner of Madison and Front streets. In a statement, Kenyon detailed the dangerous condition of the structure: 'The bulkhead is twelve feet high, supporting a fill of twelve feet, and the sidewalk twenty-two feet high. The structure had already moved ten inches. It is not anchored in any manner; the posts are sunk into the ground only about two feet and set on short planks, loosely placed in the ground. When we undertook to remove the rubbish beneath it, the whole mass would shake and the sand and gravel would come rattling down.' Kenyon alleges the city used the area as a dumping ground for logs, iron hoops, old boots, and bottles. He claims he has attempted to act responsibly by bracing the city’s collapsing sidewalk at his own expense so his men could safely work, but the city refuses to secure their own property, effectively stalling his project and preventing him from creating jobs for other men. 'Will the city kindly remove its sidewalk?' he asks. 'If the city will fix this so that I can build free from danger, I will build a good and substantial sidewalk at my own expense.'
“The only apparent force to hold this bulkhead, with the immense weight of the street behind it, in position, is the sidewalk, which is of light construction.”
Kenyon’s 1892 complaint about city-sanctioned 'rubbish' fills and crumbling infrastructure highlights the perennial tension between developers, public safety, and municipal accountability. His struggle to build while city-owned infrastructure poses a liability mirrors current debates over Seattle's aging retaining walls and the slow pace of civic infrastructure repairs in the face of development pressure.
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