The Price of Rebuilding Seattle After the Great Fire

In their haste to rebuild their city, the people of Seattle should not forget to so construct their buildings as to make a recurrence of the disaster of June 6 as unlikely as possible. It is better to spend six months erecting a building that will remain as a permanent adornment to the city than to spend three months erecting a fire trap that will be a standing menace to surrounding property and a consistent source of anxiety to its owner. Of course, a building constructed with reference to safeguards against fire will cost more than one constructed on the principles of cheapness and shabbiness. In addition to this greater cost, the owner will lose his rents during the three or four extra months necessary for the erection of a building in a proper manner. When he places the additional cost and the lost rents in the balance against the larger rents which a fire-proof building will always command and the lower rates of insurance which it will be necessary to pay on such a building, however, he will discover that he will further his financial interests by erecting the better building and taking the longer time in which to do it. We must learn, sooner or later, to construct safe and permanent buildings, and we will never find a more thorough teacher than the one who visited us on the afternoon of Thursday, June 6.