The Real Estate Frenzy of 1889
A local columnist offers a wry, cynical peek at the movers, shakers, and hustlers reshaping the streetscape of Seattle during the great land boom.
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.
Yesterday quite a rumpus was created at the Elevated depot, on Park Place, where an elderly man went up and put in his ticket on the west side, when he really wanted to go up town. He soon saw his mistake and tried to get his ticket out of the box, but it had been chopped and so he could not recover it. The gentleman was Russell Sage of this place. Almost every day a rosy-faced woman, in the prime of life, with large, full, protuberant, translucent eyes and a quick, elastic step, gets off at Park Place and goes to her office. She is Mrs. Frank Leslie. Her housework is done by hired help, while she goes to the office and works. She earns enough at the case to keep all the help she needs, and says she has not washed a dish for over two years. When she was left a widow, she did not say, 'alas,' and present the whole business to the probate court. She simply turned over the column rules of the paper, and hanging her shawl on the copy-book, set up a brief, pungent editorial, in which she stated that she had come to stay, or words to that effect, and at once began to extend her circulation.
“When she was left a widow, she did not say, 'alas,' and present the whole business to the probate court. She simply turned over the column rules of the paper... and at once began to extend her circulation.”
In 1889, Seattle was in the throes of a feverish land boom, with developers and business owners like those mentioned in the local ads promising prosperity to all who 'own their own home.' Today, that same pressure to secure land and avoid rent echoes in the city's ongoing, volatile struggle with housing affordability and property speculation.
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