Seattle's Public Ball Grounds Ruined by Grading
Young athletes find their field, cleared and maintained at their own expense, rendered useless by city infrastructure work.
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.
Some three years ago, the young men of Seattle, at an expense of nearly two hundred dollars, cleared up Colonel W. H. Squire's unoccupied block in North Seattle and converted it into a ball ground. This block made a very fair field, but when Front Street was graded, a ditch three feet deep and sixty feet wide was cut through these grounds, completely ruining them for the purpose designed. Since that time the boys have been unable to get grounds. They wanted to meet their Victoria brothers in friendly contest on our National Holiday, but on inspection, the ground was found to be too rough for any practical use. The failure of the game will be a great disappointment to many, but one will never be able to do anything in the base ball line until some steps are taken by our citizens in setting aside a ground for our boys.
“The failure of the game will be a great disappointment to many, but one will never be able to do anything in the base ball line until some steps are taken by our citizens.”
The frustration of Seattle's youth in 1883 over the loss of their self-funded athletic field highlights a persistent civic issue: the lack of public space for spontaneous play and community building in a rapidly growing city. This struggle over who has the right to occupy urban land—the city for utility or the residents for recreation—is as relevant today as it was when the city first began its massive regrades.
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