The 'Boom Town' Bust of Chin Kiang
A cautionary tale of real estate speculation from the pages of 1889 Seattle.
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.
Chin Kiang is reported to exist no longer. The page describes it as a boom town and the Tacoma of the Celestial Empire.
Corner lots there were held at an enormous figure because of the belief that the Pekin railway would erect large terminal buildings in the town. Shanghai, by the page's comparison, remains the Seattle of the Yang-t-e—hiatu district.
“Corner lots at an enormous figure, owing to the belief that the Peking railway would erect large terminal buildings there.”
This brief 1889 dispatch reflects the feverish obsession with real estate speculation and infrastructure-driven 'booms' that built both Seattle and its rivals. The comparison of a Chinese treaty port to Tacoma and Shanghai to Seattle captures the era's globalized frontier mentality, echoing contemporary concerns about how transit-oriented development and outside investment shift the value of city land.
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