The House That Slid Down the Hill
A ramshackle boarding house on Main Street collapses after heavy rains and poor construction send it sliding down an unstable Seattle hillside.
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 Mountaineer lodging-house, at 712 Main street, between Seventh and Eighth streets, slid from its foundation last evening and is now threatened with total destruction. The cause was an insecure foundation and a sliding hill back of it. The lodging-house, which contains twenty-three rooms, is old and rotten and has been threatening to go to pieces for some time. At 4 o'clock last evening, the house commenced slipping slowly and the timbers began creaking. The foundation was quickly out of place over three feet and the building was twisted; the walls were parted. The lodging-house is leased by Mrs. C. F. Kohne. Her daughter, Miss Stella Kohne, was outside on the veranda when the slipping began. In fright she jumped to the ground, a distance of nearly ten feet. She was severely bruised, but it is thought she suffered no internal injuries. Several other persons were in the house at the time of the sliding, but no one else was hurt.
“The lodging-house... is old and rotten and has been threatening to go to pieces for some time.”
Seattle’s topography has always been unforgiving to hasty development. This 1891 incident of a sliding 'rotten' boarding house mirrors the ongoing, modern-day tensions in the city where historic buildings, neglected infrastructure, and unstable soil frequently collide with the pressures of an extreme housing shortage.
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