In 1889, Seattle had an enormous fire (which started when a carpenter’s assistant over-boiled the glue so that it overflowed onto the fire) that devastated the entire 30-block metropolis. The townspeople decided it was a wonderful excuse to rebuild the city (already chock full of logistical problems, such as outhouses located in the tidal plains—which overflowed twice daily with the tides). And their hearts were in the right place, but they certainly went about the rebuilding in a backwards way.
All the new buildings were constructed directly on top of the burned buildings, and the streets were then raised 15 feet to the height of the new buildings (yes, in that order); the sidewalks were last on the list of repairs, so ladders were used to climb down from the street to the buildings for quite some time. This new construction left chambers and tunnels beneath the city where the less-than-savory business interactions took place (gambling, prostitution, whiskey distribution to the Speakeasies (run by the Seattle police, of course), etc.). The tour is a fascinating one and the guides do a wonderful job of keeping the tourists amused with the jokes and unsavory innuendos sprinkled throughout the tour.
The tour was established by William Speidel, an historian and preservationist who revealed the history of Seattle in his book Sons of Profits (a book that immediately hit the city’s banned books list and remains there to this day). In 1962, he was responsible for instigating the campaign for the preservation of Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle because the city wanted to level its oldest neighborhood to build condominiums. He successfully saved the district and subsequently created one of the first National Historic Registered Districts in the country while also saving the country’s largest collection of Victorian-Romanesque buildings. That campaign led to the development of Speidel’s Underground Tour in 1965, which takes place in Pioneer Square.
Mary Gen Davies loves being Program Associate at the Heritage Philadelphia Program, but she is seriously considering moving to the Pacific Northwest.
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