Late-Night Blaze Nearly Consumes Third Avenue Shop
A swift response by Seattle firefighters prevents a major conflagration at a secondhand goods store.
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 was discovered at 12:30 o'clock this morning in the Great Western second-hand store, at 114 South Third Street, and had it not been for the prompt work of the firemen and those first on the scene, a serious conflagration would have followed. Billy Belond turned in an alarm from box 24 and a second and third alarm followed in short order. Before the apparatus was on the spot Officer Powers, Detective Roberts and L. W. Merrill, a Great Northern railroad news agent, had broken in the door and were trying to smother a brisk blaze that was found in a heap of soldier mattresses at the rear of the store. They picked up a mattress and instantly a mass of flames started from the one underneath. Seeing that the stuff could not be carried out, they pursued the smothering process until streams from chemical No. 1 and the hydrant at the northeast corner of Washington street arrived.
“They picked up a mattress and instantly a mass of flames started from the one underneath.”
This fire occurred in the heart of what is now Pioneer Square. While the store name and the specific goods are long gone, the dense wood-frame commercial buildings of that era were notorious fire traps, driving the evolution of Seattle's modern fire department and building codes.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.