Early Morning Blaze Razes Lake Union Lodging House
A two-story frame building was gutted by fire early Saturday morning, displacing tenants and a local barber.
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 double two-story frame building, 526 and 528 Moltke street, between Republican and Mercer streets, near Lake Union, was destroyed by fire shortly after 2 o'clock this morning. One-half of the ground floor was occupied as a bakery by Peter Martin, while the remainder of the building was used as a lodging-house by a man named Tracey. A man named Clark had a barber shop in the office of the lodging-house. The building was owned by Peter Wickstrom. J. W. Searight, a driver for the bakery, went into the building soon after 2 o'clock and found it full of smoke. He says it came from Tracey's kitchen. P. A. Hamburg and other occupants of the lodging-house say that the flames came from the bakery. Hamburg says he opened his door, but the flames came right in and he had to jump from the window. James Clark, the barber, had time to dress and carry out his chair and tools. The fire department and employees from the Western Mill worked to save adjoining buildings, and the nearby property of Grinseth & Miller was saved. The loss is roughly estimated at $4,000.
“He threw his clothes out of the window and jumped out. The other lodgers did likewise.”
This neighborhood, formerly known for frame structures and small mills near Lake Union, has undergone total transformation. The intersection of what was Moltke Street (now largely reconfigured in the South Lake Union district) is unrecognizable from the wood-frame era described here.
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