A Near Disaster on the Waterfront
A fire in a Front Street lunch counter nearly consumes the business district after city officials neglected to enforce fire safety ordinances.
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.
At three o'clock yesterday morning, the inhabitants of this city were startled by the loud clanging of the fire bells, as a blaze broke out in W. W. White's Front Street block. A lunch counter operated by Heede & Bayless had been running hot cooking apparatus against a poorly mortared brick wall, igniting the lath and studding. The fire spread rapidly to the roof, and were it not for the high tide allowing firefighters to pump water from the Columbia Street slip, a general conflagration might have occurred. Several people were injured, including John Phinney, who was scorched, and a photographer named Peiser, who severely pierced his hand. The incident has reignited public anger toward the City Council for refusing to establish mandatory fire limits, leaving the wooden architecture of the city at constant risk.
“Fortunately the tide was high, so that the Columbia street slip could be used... For a time it looked as though a general conflagration was imminent.”
This 1884 account of a close call on Front Street (now First Avenue) highlights the lethal combination of wooden, hastily built commercial blocks and the lack of basic fire safety regulation that defined early Seattle. The resulting push for 'fire limits'—mandating brick construction—was a precursor to the massive city-wide upgrades that followed the Great Seattle Fire just five years later in 1889.
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