The Miracle Lifters of Tacoma
A local construction firm successfully raises a massive six-story Seattle hotel that cracked during tunnel excavation.
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.
The six-story Stander hotel in Seattle, which settled and cracked when the Great Northern tunnel was dug under it, has just been raised to its former level by Nichols & Handley of Tacoma. The building is located at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Marion Street and is valued at about $175,000. The large brick block, 120 feet square, weighs about 14,000 tons, and when the building settled unevenly, large fissures about four inches in width were made in the walls. But when the 100 jackscrews which were used in restoring the structure to its proper shape were set to work, the cracks closed naturally. The task of raising the hotel was a very difficult one and cost the railroad company about $15,000. Alex Stewart, the engineer of the Great Northern, says that the Stander hotel was the largest stone and brick building ever raised in Seattle and that the building will be as strong as ever.
“But when the 100 jackscrews which were used in restoring the structure to its proper shape were set to work the cracks closed naturally.”
Building moving and structural engineering were high-stakes spectacles in the early 20th century. Today, Seattle’s landscape is defined by the opposite: the constant demolition and replacement of historic masonry buildings rather than the labor-intensive effort to save them.
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