The Death of Whitechapel: Great Northern’s Seattle Land Grab
A major expansion of the Great Northern railway threatens to erase the working-class district of Whitechapel to build a central passenger depot.
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.
That Whitechapel is to be wiped out to make room for a big passenger depot, freight sheds and other terminal facilities for the Great Northern, is the effect of condemnation proceedings instituted by the Seattle & Montana Railroad Company in the superior court yesterday. This is a new evidence of the intention of the Great Northern to make this city the Pacific coast terminus of the road. The property which the road seeks to have condemned includes portions of blocks 12, 13, and 4 in Maynard's plat, situated between South Fifth and Commercial streets and Jackson and King streets, comprising a great portion of that part of the city that has borne the name of Whitechapel. P. P. Shelby, vice president and general manager of the Seattle & Montana, stated that the company desires to purchase the property for the purpose of establishing depot facilities to handle the traffic of Seattle at the lowest possible expense. He noted that negotiations for a union depot with other companies failed because the other companies demanded the Great Northern give up its franchise on Railroad Avenue.
“It meant that the officials of that road had every confidence in the future of this city and that they did not intend to let this city wait for a good depot until the other roads got ready to give it.”
The neighborhood of Whitechapel, located near what is now the International District/Pioneer Square border, was indeed swallowed by the expanding industrial footprint of the railroads. Today, Seattle continues to grapple with the tension between private infrastructure development and the displacement of historical, often marginalized, urban communities.
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