The Great Seattle Rebuild After the Fire
Construction crews rush to replace the city’s burned-out downtown with brick and iron blocks before the end of the year.
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.
All along Front Street, from the business center to the New Dock, there is active industry in every direction. At the extreme end of South Seattle, contractors are working at a feverish pace. When asked how much lumber was being used in the city, one contractor replied that it was impossible to estimate, as there is a city-wide race to get buildings enclosed for the winter. Between Pike and Pine, three large three-story frame buildings are being erected by the light of lanterns. Further north, in the area known as 'Belltown,' labor is just as intense. Laborers are excavating deep basements for stone and brick blocks, including a major construction effort by Governor Squire. Despite the progress, building materials remain scarce; bricklayers and carpenters frequently stop work to wait for more supplies, and there is a constant, desperate demand for teamsters to haul wood and stone.
“We are short of lumber, which is becoming scarce. It is hard to get teams to haul it, even with the high demand.”
This frenetic 1889 construction boom, sparked by the Great Seattle Fire, set the physical template for what became our modern downtown core. The anxiety over material shortages and the 'get it built at all costs' mentality mirrors the intense development pressure Seattle faces during its modern boom cycles.
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