After the Great Fire: A City Rebuilds from Ashes
Following the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, city authorities clash with circus owners and residents over the 'tinderbox' conditions that allowed the blaze to consume the downtown business district.
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 disaster which has overtaken Seattle is one which we have been expecting for twelve years. Never has an American city of the same importance been so disgracefully cluttered with a lot of old tinder boxes. The worst part of it is that the heat created by those old fire-traps has burned down some buildings as fine as any on the coast, particularly the opera house and the San Francisco drug store. Well, there will not be any more such tinder-boxes erected there hereafter. The city authorities yesterday decided not to grant Hieks Bros.' circus a license to show in Seattle, and City Clerk Ferris notified them by telegraph. The reason assigned for this action is that the city, in its present condition, cannot afford to have the amount of labor which would be drawn away from the rebuilding of the city. While the water mains were drawn to the fire, it is stated that not even a hose cart was there to aid in their work. A sufficient number of volunteer firemen could not be reached, with the result that when they arrived, they were too late to proceed to the scene. This state of things undoubtedly had much to do with the disastrous fire which resulted last week.
“Never has an American city of the same importance been so disgracefully cluttered with a lot of old tinder boxes.”
The 1889 Great Seattle Fire redefined the city's urban planning, much like modern-day debates over fire safety and density in historic buildings. Today, Seattle remains caught in a similar tension between honoring its historical character and the urgent, often painful, necessity of rapid modernization.
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