The Great Fire at Schwabacher Bros.
A massive blaze destroys a landmark wholesale house in downtown Seattle, shaking the foundations of Pioneer Square.
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.
Last evening the store of Schwabacher Bros. & Co., on Commercial street near Pioneer place, was burned at a loss of $525,000. The fire, which is supposed to have resulted from the spontaneous combustion of oils or other such materials, caught in the basement about 6 o'clock and burned for more than four hours. The building, four stories high and of brick, fronted fifty-four feet on the west side of Commercial street. The stock of hardware, groceries and general merchandise was worth $325,000—making a total of $445,000 for both stock and building. The fire department worked with great skill, and the fireboat Snoqualmie steamed to her place promptly, providing seven streams of water that saved the nearby Northern hotel from destruction. By 10:20, the flames were controlled, though the building was a total wreck.
“The fireboat Snoqualmie also steamed to her place promptly, and did splendid work.”
The Schwabacher fire occurred in the heart of what we now call Pioneer Square, a district that has faced repeated cycles of fire and redevelopment. The reliance on the Snoqualmie fireboat echoes modern debates about the adequacy of Seattle's specialized emergency infrastructure in a rapidly densifying urban core.
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