Living on Borrowed Time in Lower Seattle
A scathing editorial decries the 'man-traps' of the waterfront, where buildings are propped up on flimsy planks to accommodate rising street grades.
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 South Third street building which collapsed the other day is being rebuilt, but it does not seem to have served as a lesson. It does not take a practical builder to see that a large percentage of buildings in the vicinity of Main, Washington, and Jackson streets are in a fearfully unsafe condition. Notice, for instance, the building occupied as a Chinese laundry on Main street immediately above Third. The wonder is that such a building will stand for a day. The plan in vogue seems to be either to raise a building higher from the ground as the street grade is raised, marking each new elevation by a substructure of two-inch planks, or to remove a shanty from a principal street and deposit it elsewhere, elevated twenty feet on a five-dollar scaffolding. These are not buildings; they are man-traps. A real gust of wind would be almost certain to be the bearer of death and destruction to portions of lower Seattle.
“These are not buildings; they are man-traps and each person who enters them must do so at the risk of his life.”
This editorial captures the precariousness of Seattle's early regrade era, where buildings were constantly being elevated to match new street levels, creating massive structural risks that residents live with even today in terms of seismic vulnerability.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.