seattle

The topography of central Seattle was radically altered by a series of regrades in the city's first century of urban settlement, in what might have been the largest such alteration of urban terrain at the time. When European settlers first came to Seattle in the early 1850s, the tides of...

Seattle's first Panorama by Sammis. Taken from the second floor of Snoqualmie Hall at the southwest corner of Main Street and Commercial Street, long since renamed First Avenue South. ca. 1864.

Visited the Underground Seattle Tour (again). The below coat of arms was inconspicuously displayed in one of the tunnels under the 1st Ave S. The tour route was along that red arrow below. It's easy to miss the crest. I didn't notice it until my wife pointed it out. This is where the...

Seattle Central Library On the night of January 1, 1901, the Yesler Mansion burned taking most of the old library collection with it. The library records were salvaged, along with the 2,000 volumes of the children's collection. Other than those, though, practically the only books salvaged were...

I do not remember how the topic came up, but a while ago, a co-worker of mine mentioned some dude who was making a lot of money by illegally logging an underwater forest in Lake Washington. From the legal perspective, the story ended up being a bit more complicated, but that's besides the...

Ended up driving to Seattle to take a look at some of the Pioneer Square area buildings. And while the main purpose of my Seattle visit was to verify a few things pertaining to the Sinking Ship parking garage, walking the streets made me think about something else. Do we have any evidence of...

This is one of the most famous buildings in Seattle, and rightfully so. The structure is pretty stunning. The history of its construction has a bit of a mystery to it. Of course, this mystery is not exactly on the surface for everyone to see. One would have to actually investigate, to see the...

The Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel, also known as the SR 99 Tunnel, is a bored highway tunnel in the city of Seattle.. The 2-mile (3.2 km), double-decker tunnel carries a section of State Route 99 under Downtown Seattle. Construction began in July 2013 using "Bertha", at the time the...

One of the buildings I ran into during my visit to Seattle (Washington, USA) a few weeks ago was this awesome beautiful Holy Names Academy building. Wikipedia states that its construction began in 1906 and was completed in 1908. And there seems to be nothing out of the ordinary till you...

I have been looking at these pictures for a while now. They definitely add to the strangeness of the time frame when the majority of the bizarre events took place. So what am I talking about? Some call it The Great Seattle Regrade, some call it the Denny Regrade. Here is what Wikipedia has to...

There is something very bizarre in the history of Seattle. It is related to the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, followed by an enormous construction boom of 1889-90. This construction "on steroids" is something I would like to talk about. The numbers are really off the charts, so bear with me. The...

Let us begin by trying to understand a thing or two about the architect, Elmer H. Fisher. There has to be tons of information on the local hero-architect. He is considered the most prolific of the architects involved in rebuilding the city for designing almost half of the major downtown...