Fire Scare in Everett
A hardware store blaze threatened to consume a full city block of frame buildings.
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.
Fire broke out at 5 o'clock this evening in the store of the Everett Hardware Company, at the corner of Swalwell and Hewitt avenues, and it seemed for a time as though the entire block of two-story frame buildings would be destroyed, but the fire department checked the flames. The principal losses are: A. J. McIntyre, on building of Everett Hardware Company, $1,500, insured in favor of the Puget Sound Lumber Company, which had a lien on the building; Everett Hardware Company, stock, probably $1,000, no insurance; E. Carrara, commission merchant, $450; A. J. McIntyre, lodging house adjoining Everett Hardware Company, gutted, loss unknown. The stock of the Great Northern second-hand store and the Everett Harness Company, in the same block, were damaged by water.
“It seemed for a time as though the entire block of two-story frame buildings would be destroyed.”
Everett was a rapidly expanding mill town in the 1890s, and wood-frame construction made 'conflagrations' a constant, existential threat. Today, the intersection of Hewitt and Swalwell is part of the city’s historic commercial core, though the dense, fire-prone frame blocks have largely been replaced by brick and concrete structures.
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