The Denny Family's Streetcar Empire Comes Due
A tangle of promissory notes, pledged railway stocks and bonds lands D. T. Denny and his sons in superior court, with a judgment looming over Seattle's early car lines.
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.
Yesterday in the superior court, three suits against D. T. Denny, John B. Denny and Thomas Denny on promissory notes connected with Seattle street railways came before the court. The Puget Sound National Bank and F. T. Blunck were among the plaintiffs. The actions grew out of loans and purchases of stock and mortgage bonds in the Seattle Consolidated Street Railway Company, the Front Street Cable Company and the Seattle Cable Railway Company. The notes had been renewed repeatedly; interest was paid, but no principal. The Dennys answered that their obligations, aggregating more than $133,000, had been rolled into other notes and that the securities had been pledged. The total amount at issue was reported as high as $800,000.
“No payment was ever made, except interest.”
Seattle's early streetcar network was built on family fortunes and heavy borrowing; when the notes came due, the Denny name was not enough to hold off the bank. The same tension between speculative infrastructure and who ultimately pays for it still shapes debates over transit and development.
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