Arson Attempt Targets Ballard Hotel
A suspicious fire at the Ballard Hotel was thwarted by a night watchman, raising alarms about safety in the burgeoning mill town.
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.
An unsuccessful attempt was made to burn the Ballard hotel between 3 and 4 o'clock Sunday morning. The night watchman at the Seattle Cedar Lumber Company's mill, which stands about 300 feet from the hotel, saw flames bursting from under the basement on the south side of the hotel and immediately gave the alarm. Before the fire department arrived, he, with J. Johnson, the proprietor, put out the flames with a few pailfuls of water. A two-pound baking powder can filled with kerosene oil and old rags and a burnt match were found under the sill next to a cedar post in the middle of the house, which proved that it was the work of an incendiary. C. W. Shain is the owner of the building and knows of no reason why anyone should wish to destroy his property. J. Johnson, the proprietor, says he has no enemies that he is aware of and can assign no reason why anyone should attempt to burn the house. His boarders are union and non-union men in about equal numbers. The Ballard hotel is a large two-story and a half frame building at the south end of Ballard avenue, and a fire once under good headway would be likely to destroy a large part of the business houses on Ballard avenue.
“A two-pound baking powder can filled with kerosene oil and old rags and a burnt match were found under the sill... which proved that it was the work of an incendiary.”
Ballard, once an independent mill town, was frequently shaped by the tension between union and non-union labor. Today's Ballard is a gentrified neighborhood, but the memory of its industrial, working-class roots persists in the historical preservation of the area.
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