Seattle's Unstable Foundation
Filling in the city's tide lands and marshy spots creates a precarious base for new buildings.
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.
What was supposed to be comparatively solid ground, comprising the lots on both sides of Main street east of Second for a distance of several hundred feet, is evidently hunting for a firmer foundation. The cumulative weight of many thousand yards of earth employed in filling in and raising Main and Second streets to the required grade, has proven too much for the ground underneath, which has taken a descent China-ward a distance of five or six feet. The earth under the streets thus settling has caused large cracks to appear on each side and crowded up the middle of the lots adjoining like a loaf of bread when rising.
“The earth under the streets thus settling has caused large cracks to appear on each side and crowded up the middle of the lots adjoining like a loaf of bread when rising.”
Early Seattle was a landscape of steep hills and soft tide flats, and the massive regrading projects required to make the city walkable eventually led to instability in areas like Pioneer Square. Today, engineers must still contend with the city's complex soil composition and liquefaction risks during seismic events, echoing this 1883 struggle to build on solid ground.
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