Ballard Opera House Destroyed by Blaze
A mysterious fire levels the largest building in Ballard, narrowly sparing the surrounding town.
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 Ballard opera house was destroyed by fire last night, together with Fanslau & Co.'s butcher shop adjoining, where the fire started. The blaze began at 11:30 in the rear part of the shop, a one-story frame building on Burke Avenue near Broadway. The opera house was 100x80 feet in size and was consumed within twenty minutes. The building was one of the finest in Ballard. The town itself escaped destruction solely because there was no wind. The water was not turned on until fifteen minutes after the alarm because a man had to be sent some distance to operate the valve, and even then, pressure was low due to a break in the supply pipe.
“That the town itself escaped destruction was due solely to the fact that there was no wind.”
Ballard was an independent city when this fire occurred in 1893, struggling with basic infrastructure like fire water pressure. Today, the loss of a neighborhood landmark 'opera house'—often the primary social hub for small towns—resonates with the ongoing loss of cultural spaces to rapid gentrification.
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