The Boomtown Blueprint: How Seattle Was Sold in 1888
A single day’s real estate filings from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reveal a city being carved, traded, and branded at a frantic, speculative pace.
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.
Sixteen deeds were filed for record yesterday. The total amount of consideration was $116,365, for an average of over $7,200 per transaction. The listings encompass a vast web of territorial growth: George Kinnear and wife to W. J. Jennings for lots in Kinnear’s Addition; C. C. Calkins to Amanda P. Clark for tracts in the Maple Leaf addition to Green Lake circle; and numerous transfers by H. A. Bell, J. H. Rengstorff, and A. B. Llewellyn. Beyond the city center, large acreage tracts are turning over rapidly, including sales in the West Seattle five-acre tracts and timber lands in the surrounding townships, signaling the relentless expansion of the Seattle real estate market.
“Sixteen deeds were filed for record yesterday. The total amount of consideration was $116,365.”
The frantic pace of land transfers in 1888 echoes the hyper-speculative development cycles that have defined Seattle for over a century. Just as 19th-century investors gambled on ‘additions’ to the city, modern residents struggle with the legacy of a landscape designed as a commodity rather than a community.
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