The Real Estate Poet of West Seattle
In an era of aggressive land speculation, developers sold West Seattle not just as property, but as a vision of the Mediterranean transplanted to the Pacific Northwest.
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.
We quote the following description of the view as seen from West Seattle, from an article in the San Francisco Journal of Commerce: 'Our Seattle friends, we trust, will prove a magnet within their state of verse and rhapsody this season; but we take an exceptional interest in the immediate surroundings of the burgeoning "West End" and must risk being considered "enthusiastic" in our praise by some, and "loony" to others. We must excuse ourselves by saying that we have been from Alaska to the Mexican border; we have seen the sun beam o’er the Alps, and have reveled in the fields of lucerne from the hills of Kafi; we have felt the soft influence of the Mediterranean and drifted on the castle-crowned banks of its glorious Rhine. We have sought and admired the ancient Old World, and the best found in the new, and have even been moved with the beauty of the specific view found in the auric land of West Seattle; it is simply unique.'
“We have seen the sun beam o’er the Alps... and have drifted on the castle-crowned banks of its glorious Rhine... yet the view found in the auric land of West Seattle; it is simply unique.”
The hyperbole of this 1889 sales pitch mirrors the modern-day marketing of Seattle’s 'urban lifestyle,' where developers still leverage natural beauty to inflate property values. Even then, the struggle for civic identity and affordable infrastructure—evidenced by the debates over street planning mentioned in the same paper—shows that Seattle's growing pains are as old as the city itself.
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