The Great Seattle Front Street Excavation of 1876
As teams and scrapers descend on the heart of the city, laborers begin carving out the steep terrain between Cherry and James to make way for the future.
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.
This morning the teams and scrapers were busily engaged on the grading of Front Street between Cherry and James. A cut of about five feet is to be made in front of the Pavilion, and a fill of three or four feet above James. Workmen are engaged in getting out the logs for the cribbing, and today work will be begun at the intersection of Marion Street. Mr. Edwards, the contractor, will go up the Sound today to procure teams and tools for prosecuting the work with all practical expedition.
“A cut of about five feet is to be made in front of the Pavilion, and a fill of three or four feet above James.”
Today's constant shuffling of Seattle's downtown topography for transit and utility upgrades echoes the 1876 'grading' era, when the city literally reshaped its hills to meet the needs of a growing port. While the scrapers are now massive excavators, the civic obsession with carving a level path through the hillside remains a defining feature of the Seattle experience.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.