Five Free Cottages Offered With Seattle Building Lots
Developers Kittinger Brothers launch a marketing blitz for their new 'Jackson and Rainier Streets Addition,' complete with a promise to raffle off modern cottages to random lot buyers.
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.
Jackson and Rainier Streets Addition is one of the largest, best located, and most desirable tracts ever placed upon the market, consisting of 60 choice residence lots, located in the growing direction of the city, and only 17 minutes' ride from the Postoffice. An unprecedented offer: Five elegantly finished, modern design cottages, ranging in value from $500 to $1,000 each, to be given away with the property. Every purchaser secures a lot, and five out of the whole number secure houses with the lots. The uniforms price of lots is $275 each, 50x100 feet. The greatest building enterprise ever inaugurated in Seattle, affording to each purchaser the full value of the original investment, and a small fortune in every five of the whole number. The award of houses to be made October 1st, 1888. The addition is connected with the business center of Seattle by the Jackson Street Cable Railway. The road starts at the corner of Jackson and Second streets and runs up Jackson street to Lake Washington, passing within a few hundred feet of the addition. The cars will run every 20 minutes, and in less than three months the service will be adjusted to pass every 10 minutes. The fare is only 5 cents. Jackson and Rainier Streets Addition is owned by Charles H. and George B. Kittinger, who are amply able to carry out the enterprise. It is their intention to commence work upon the houses at once.
“The greatest building enterprise ever inaugurated in Seattle, affording to each purchaser the full value of the original investment, and a small fortune in every five of the whole number.”
In 1888, developers used aggressive lotteries and transit promises to lure buyers to the fringes of a booming Seattle. Today, the 'Jackson and Rainier' neighborhood—now part of the dense, transit-rich Central District and Judkins Park area—represents the exact opposite: an urban core grappling with the consequences of that early sprawl and the constant pressure of modern housing demand.
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