The Dog Who Defied Gravity (and the Mayor)
A canine visitor to Seattle’s Tremont Hotel proves that while political patronage is hard to shake, a dog’s instinct for self-preservation is stronger.
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 evening at very late steel looking off of the passenger ferries, went to the top of the Tremont Hotel to have a look at the city. A boy of boys looting him and at once took themselves to the top of the building to experiment on the jumping qualities of the animal. He was an ally and had that philosophical turn of mind that it would be useless to argue the danger there was in undertaking the feat his associates had suggested to him, and no without any snarling argument or snapping teeth, he announced himself ready and prepared himself for the ordeal. The leap from the Tremont Hotel to the ground is a perilous one, but the dog was brimful of enterprise and made it. The distance is about 60 feet, and while passing through that space the dog evidently had some grand old ideas of gravity the world will never know. When he struck the ground he was stunned and lay motionless for several minutes, but finally got up and walked off, resolved in his own mind, doubtless, never to ascend to such lofty heights again, and particularly when there is a boy in militant detention.
In 1877, Seattle’s 'Tremont Hotel' was a hub of civic life where politicians like Secretary Chandler dealt with the corrupt patronage system. Today, that site is part of the historic Pioneer Square district, a neighborhood that has survived fires and earthquakes but still grapples with the tension between historic preservation and modern development pressures.
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