The Railway Reaches the Waterfront
New rail lines carve a path through the heart of the city’s industrial waterfront, displacing old businesses and promising a new era of commerce.
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.
Last year the owners of the city water front granted and conveyed to the Oregon and Transcontinental Railroad Company and the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad Company a right of way for a single or double track railroad, thirty feet in width. Until a few days ago but little work was done in that direction. However, the contract for the piling and capping has been let to H. A. Atkins, and we are reliably informed that that portion of the work will be completed by the first day of April. The road will cross King street at the foot of the incline, and will keep along near the shore, crossing Mill street near Charley McDonald's blacksmith shop and inside of Yester's mill. In order to clear the track, the company are moving the building joining McDonald's blacksmith shop out of the way. The old Senate saloon building will be torn down and the building west of it moved over to take its place. On the opposite side of Mill street the Home restaurant building and Snyder's saloon building will be torn down, and it is expected that by the first of May loaded cars from New York and other eastern cities will be strung along the city front.
“On the opposite side of Mill street the Home restaurant building and Snyder's saloon building will be torn down, and it is expected that by the first of May loaded cars from New York and other eastern cities will be strung along the city front.”
This 1884 expansion marked the beginning of Seattle’s transition from a collection of independent wharves to a centralized industrial port, a process that would define the city's relationship with its shoreline for the next century. Today, the tension between maintaining industrial access and public waterfront use continues to be a central theme in Seattle’s urban planning, as seen in ongoing debates over the future of the Port and the revitalized waterfront parks.
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