Late-Night Blaze Consumes Squire Avenue Grocery
A two-story building near Lake Street is destroyed by fire, while a neighboring residence occupied by an engineer for the Seattle Steam Heat and Power Company is saved from destruction.
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.
The store building at the northwest corner of Squire avenue and Lake street was burned last night and a dwelling house next door badly damaged, entailing altogether a loss of about $8,000. The corner building was two and one-half stories in height and was occupied on the ground floor by F. W. Ward, a grocer. The upper stories were vacant. The house next door, 1014 Lake street, was occupied by T. H. Lee, the engineer of the Seattle Steam Heat and Power Company. The alarm was turned in at about 12:30. Lee succeeded in getting out some of his household goods, but suffered a loss of about $500, with an additional $1,000 in damage to the house structure. Fire crews from stations across the city arrived too late to save the grocery, but successfully prevented the fire from spreading further. Mr. Ward estimates the loss on his grocery stock at $3,000, partially covered by insurance.
“Lee succeeded in getting out some of his household goods, but had no insurance, however, and his loss amounts to about $500.”
Fires in dense wooden buildings were a constant threat in 1890s Seattle, especially for small businesses. Today, while building codes have significantly mitigated the risk of accidental spread between structures, the struggle to balance historic urban density with fire safety remains a civic concern.
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