The Price of 'Progress' on Madison Street
Property owners spar with City Council over the ruinous costs and assessments of the aggressive new street grading project.
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 famous Madison street grade occupied the attention of the City Council for an hour last night, but finally went over to another meeting without definite action. A paper was presented by P. H. Lewis, owner of two lots on the street, in which he virtually declares that the assessment was improperly, illegally and incompletely made. The trouble is this: To please a few persons living out in the woods, or on Lake Washington, an extended improvement of Madison street has been ordered—an improvement reaching far out into the timber, exceedingly costly in its nature, and for which there was but the smallest actual call. Lots that were before among the most beautiful in the city have been immensely injured, their actual value being reduced in the aggregate not far from $31,000. Not only is this extraordinary loss incurred, but these lots, or the persons representing them, are now called upon to pay the most enormous tax thereon. All this injury and expense is caused for the selfish gratification and personal gain of a number of individuals who pay little or none of the taxes.
“All this injury and expense is caused for the selfish gratification and personal gain of a number of individuals who pay little or none of the taxes.”
The tension between infrastructure expansion and the financial burden placed on long-term property owners remains a constant theme in Seattle's urban development, from the 1880s regrades to modern property tax fights.
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