The City’s Sick and the Floating Hazard
A growing public outcry in 1889 Seattle demands the relocation of the city’s pesthouse, currently moored in a dangerous, wind-swept location that threatens public health.
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 present location of the pesthouse is the center of a very great amount of resentment from the people of the city. In the first place, it is located right next to the long wharf on the waterfront, and it is on the outer end of the dock as required by the health ordinance to reach the city. As the wind is usually from the west, it is generally seen that there is a just cause for fear. Its distance from the city is only about 100 yards, and this is another source of great fear. The city council constituted and empowered a committee to select a site for a pesthouse and to construct the same, but it has not yet been done, and no offer for the site has been offered except that a location could not be found where the adjoining property owners would consent to have a pesthouse constructed. Accordingly, rather than offend anyone who would not be materially injured, the authorities have seen fit to locate the old pesthouse in a place where it imperils the health and prosperity of the entire city. These are matters which are receiving very much unfavorable criticism from the people of the city, who regard the action of the authorities as very indiscreet to say the least.
“The authorities have seen fit to locate the old pesthouse in a place where it imperils the health and prosperity of the entire city.”
This 1889 account of 'NIMBYism'—where residents refuse to allow a necessary public health facility near them—echoes the fierce debates over siting homeless shelters and safe consumption sites in modern Seattle. The struggle to balance necessary infrastructure for the vulnerable against local property concerns remains a defining tension of the city's civic life.
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