A Leap from the Flames in Fremont
An elderly resident barely escapes a burning home, underscoring the precarious nature of life in the wooden suburbs of 1890s Seattle.
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.
A two-story frame dwelling at Fremont, belonging to O. J. Auburn, caught fire at 9 o'clock last night, and was burned to the ground. Auburn was asleep upstairs when the flames broke out, and was forced to jump from a two-story window in order to save himself from death. Auburn has no idea how the fire originated. The building is situated on Aurora street, about eight blocks from the lakeshore, and was but recently completed at a cost of $1,000. Auburn went to bed early last evening and his eldest daughter, aged 17 years, who lives with him, was at church when the alarm was raised. She hurried home just in time to see the flames eating away the stairway, and her aged father running frantically upstairs. The old man opened a window and jumped. He landed on his feet in a grassy spot and escaped without a scratch. The furniture, valued at several hundred dollars, was nearly all destroyed. Auburn carried $600 insurance on the house with the Home Insurance Company of Seattle, and he had the furniture insured for $200. Misfortunes do not seem to come singly for Mr. Auburn; it is scarcely three weeks since he buried his wife.
“She hurried home just in time to see the flames eating away the stairway, and her aged father running frantically upstairs.”
Fremont in 1892 was an outlying, wooden neighborhood where fire was a constant, terrifying threat to residents. Today, the density of the Aurora corridor makes the memory of these early, combustible structures a stark reminder of how rapidly Seattle’s landscape—and its building codes—have evolved to prioritize public safety.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.