Seattle Starts Building Its Own Ground
Contractors drive the first piles in the tide flats, launching a massive fill project that will remake the city’s waterfront and industrial south end.
Work was commenced yesterday (the day set by the contract) in good earnest by the Seattle and Washington Waterway Company on the tide lands, pile drivers going to work on Railroad Avenue. J. R. Savage, the government engineer, has arrived in the city from Snohomish slough, where he had charge of the dredging for the government, and will be known hereafter as the resident engineer for the waterway company under his superior, Capt. Symons, who is the chief engineer in charge of the work. Mr. Savage has had much experience in this kind of work, and was in charge of the improvements in Olympia harbor under Capt. Symons. The latter is expected from Portland Sunday to look over the work.
Howard & Tigan and Conway & Bogart, pile-driving contractors, have been given the contract for the pile-driving necessary for the bulkheads on contract No. 3, and they have commenced work between Charles and Norman streets. Contract No. 3 represents the smallest area of all four contracts (only about seventy-five acres), but this portion of the flats lies along Commercial Street and is directly adjoining the improvements now existing. It is therefore essential that this portion of the work be done first. At the same time it is possible that portions of contracts Nos. 1 and 4 will be filled in also as the needs of the case may require, although the contractors mentioned have only been allowed the sub-contract for the tract of seventy-five acres. D. A. McKenzie, manager of the waterway company, and Engineer Savage were on the ground nearly all day yesterday looking over the work and directing the improvements.
The more valuable land in the harbor subject to filling is all embodied in the area on which work has now been commenced, among the owners being the Oregon Improvement Company, the Seattle Post Company, Allen Nelson, San Francisco Bridge Company, Hall Paulson Company, D. K. Durie, H. H. Dearborn Co., and various syndicates representing extensive holdings. Great interest is attached to the first pile driven on this great undertaking, and the officers of the waterway company cut off pieces of the bark to preserve as souvenirs of the successful beginning of a great public improvement to which they have been bending all their energies for years, and in which they have triumphed over innumerable obstacles.
“Great interest is attached to the first pile driven on this great undertaking, and the officers of the waterway company cut off pieces of the bark to preserve as souvenirs.”
The tide flats that contractors began filling in 1895 became the industrial backbone of modern Seattle—SoDo, the stadium district and the working waterfront. The same questions about who owns reclaimed land and who profits from public infrastructure still shape fights over the waterfront and the port.
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