The Unlucky Blacksmith of Front Street
A routine building project in early Seattle ends in a chaotic tumble as a blacksmith shop collapses, sending tools and timber into the thoroughfare.
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.
Early yesterday morning, workmen in a blacksmith shop on Front Street, near Lenora, were attempting to move the building. The structure, which was a light frame, was being raised on jacks when the underpinning gave way and the building tipped over, sliding down an embankment into the street. A fall of ten feet was sufficient to demolish the frame structure and its contents, scattering tools all over the street. Wilkinson, one of the workmen, was underneath the building when it tipped, and he made a lucky escape from death by dropping into a hollow. He was somewhat bruised and was taken to his home.
“A fall of ten feet was sufficient to demolish the frame structure and its contents, scattering tools all over the street.”
In 1889, buildings were routinely jacked up, moved, or rebuilt as Seattle grappled with its steep topography and post-fire reconstruction. Today, Front Street (now 1st Avenue) is a bustling transit corridor, but the struggle to maintain and move fragile historic structures remains a persistent, if less violent, theme in Seattle’s rapidly densifying urban landscape.
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