The Day the Hurricane Wrecked the Waterfront
A fierce gale tears through Seattle, collapsing a partially built factory on the tide flats and sending laborers sprinting for their lives.
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 wind began to blow fresh from the south yesterday forenoon, and by afternoon it had expanded into a gale which lashed the harbor of Seattle and stirred up angry-looking white waves. Out in the harbor, the Mechanics' Mill Company had been busy building a sash and door factory, 60 feet wide and 125 feet in length, and two stories in height. The structure was being erected on piles. As the work had only been in progress for about two weeks, it was not nearly finished. The frame was completed, and the roof and part of the sides were on. The wind had a sweep of a mile or two across the open end of the bay, and the building sustained its full, unchecked strength. At 11:30 o'clock, the superintendent saw the building was going to collapse and shouted to the men to run for their lives. They exited with such alacrity that all escaped injury. Their exit was not made a moment too soon, for the house collapsed like a structure of cards. The wind lifted the roof and north side and threw them into the water. The machinery, consisting of the latest improved models that had arrived from the East just a week prior, was ruined by the falling timbers. President I.W. Bigelow stated that while the loss is significant, the company intends to rush the building to completion as fast as possible.
“Their exit was not made a moment too soon, for the house collapsed like a structure of cards.”
This 1889 storm provides a stark reminder of Seattle’s historical vulnerability to extreme weather on its tide flats—a geography that has since been filled and paved over. Today’s industrial battles over waterfront infrastructure, though less literal in their destruction, continue to define the tension between Seattle’s maritime economy and its rapidly changing urban landscape.
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