Fire Sweeps Through Seattle’s Cooperage
A morning inferno destroys fifteen homes, leaving families homeless and rumors of child casualties swirling through the city.
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.
At twenty minutes past 3 in the morning, a fire broke out in the shops on Oregon street, between the unnamed cross street and Drumm. In a few minutes the adjoining buildings were on fire. Buildings on Ja street burned, and besides the cooper shops the fire extended through to Oregon street.
A butcher shop and a tenement house that was the residence of eight families were destroyed on Oregon street. About the number given only as “teen” families were turned out by the fire, and it was rumored that children were burned.
“About fifteen families were turned out of homes by the fire. It is rumored that three children were burned.”
The precarious nature of Seattle’s early wooden housing stock makes this 1876 fire a haunting ancestor of the city’s ongoing struggles with urban densification and fire safety. Today’s concerns over rapid development and displacement echo the plight of those fifteen families suddenly cast out by the 1876 inferno.
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