The Dark Side of Seattle’s Growth
As Seattle expanded in 1880, its infrastructure struggled to keep pace with the population boom, leaving residents to navigate rotting sidewalks and unlit streets.
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.
Our town is rapidly extending. It is reaching out toward the north, south, east, and west, and it is filling up as well. New houses are going up in every direction, and the sound of the hammer and the saw is heard from dawn to dark. Winter is on with its darkness and its discomforts, and it is no better now than it will be later for the renewal of old sidewalks and the building of new. At least two miles of walk should be built or rebuilt within thirty days, and it would be better if the length was five. Many of the old walks are dangerous to life and limb. The boards run the wrong way, and there are great cracks between, as in the walk along Front Street, from Pine north. In places the walks are only three or four feet wide, with ditches and bogs alongside, rendering a fall from them both easy and dangerous. In other places there are broken boards and steps, which should no longer be allowed to exist. Another thing needed is more gas on the streets. The city gets its gas under the new arrangement at a very low rate, and it can well afford to use more of it. The gas limits should be extended to Madison Street on the north, and a half dozen lights put in between there and Columbia at the Front, Second and Third Street corners.
“Many of the old walks are dangerous to life and limb.”
In 1880, Seattle was grappling with the growing pains of rapid urbanization—specifically, the disconnect between rising property development and basic public infrastructure. Today, that tension persists in Seattle’s ongoing struggles to fund and maintain transit and pedestrian safety amidst a continuous, high-speed building boom.
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