The Price of Progress on Stewart Street
Forty property owners take the city to court over a doubled assessment for the grading of Stewart Street.
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 suit of great importance to property owners was begun yesterday in the superior court, bringing to an issue a conflict that has been going on for nearly four years. It is brought against the city of Seattle by about forty property owners in the assessment district created for the grading of Stewart street. In 1889, property owners petitioned for the grading of the street from Fourth to Depot, but the council ordered it from West to Depot, forcing those east of Fourth to bear the cost of cutting down Denny Hill. Despite contractor disputes and legal protests, the city eventually assessed the property owners under the old charter. Later, the city council decided the assessment should have been made under the new freeholders' charter, leading to a re-assessment by front footage that more than doubled the burden on residents. The plaintiffs are now seeking judicial intervention to stop the city from selling their property to cover these delinquent assessments.
“The council ordered the work done, but the engineer changed the grade, the contractor refused to fulfill his contract and a new contract was made, the property owners protest at every step.”
This 1893 battle over the city's power to levy assessments for infrastructure like 'cutting down Denny Hill' reflects a perennial tension in Seattle: who pays for the physical transformation of the city—the individual property owner or the public purse? The legal frustration mirrors modern debates over how infrastructure costs, such as transit or street improvements, are burdened upon residents.
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