The Great 'Beer Hall' False Alarm
A late-night fire scare in 1877 Seattle sends the city into a panic, only to reveal how quickly a rumor could mobilize a crowd and expose the city's nerves.
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.
About a quarter before twelve last night a cry of fire was raised, and forthwith the fire-bell gave out the alarm. The streets were soon thronged with excited multitudes; then the engine with its crowd of firemen appeared on the scene, but the fire appeared to be wanting to put the damper on the excitement, and the crowds rushed forth in every direction, first up one street and then down another, and finally began to regard the thing as a 'sell.' At this juncture two vine-staged individuals hustled along through the crowd at Commercial street and one was heard to remark, 'Jim, there ain't any clothes in this 'er thing.' It turned out, however, that the alarm was well-founded, and that the city had luckily escaped a conflagration. The alarm originated from a fire which was discovered in the loft used as a carpenter shop over the Centennial Beer Hall, and which was most fortunately extinguished with some pails of water before any damage was done. The origin of the fire is only conjectured, but it is supposed, however, that the shavings and bits of boards among which it was discovered had been ignited by sparks of fire from the pipes of some parties who occupy lodging rooms in the loft.
“The streets were soon thronged with excited multitudes... and finally began to regard the thing as a 'sell.'”
This 1877 incident at a downtown beer hall highlights the constant anxiety of a rapidly growing wooden city living in fear of the next Great Fire. It resonates with modern Seattle, where residents still watch for urban blazes—though today, the concern is often the rapid loss of historic low-rise structures to new development.
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