On the afternoon of June 6, 1889, a pot of glue destroyed Seattle the rough-and-tumble logging town, making way for Seattle the metropolis.
That fateful day, John E. Back was heating glue on the stove in Victor Clairmont's cabinet shop in the basement of the Pontius building at 922 Front Street. The unattended glue pot burst into flames. Attempts to put the fire out with water only spattered the glue around the workshop, and soon the whole building was engulfed.
John Back described the events of the day in an interview printed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "I cut some balls of glue and put them in the glue pot on the stove [and] went to work about twenty-five feet away, near the front door. After a while somebody said Look at the glue.' Another fellow, a Findlander from New York, then took a piece of board and laid it on to smother the glue, but the board caught fire. Then I run and took the pot of water to smother the fire and poured it over the pot of glue, which was blazing up high. When I throw the water on, the glue flew all over the shop into the shavings and everything take fire (Lange 1999)."
On that dry, windy day, the fire quickly spread from the Pontius building throughout downtown Seattle. Firefighting efforts were hampered by low pressure in the town's privately-owned water system. In addition, fire hydrants had been installed only on every other street, and some of the water pipes were made from hollow logs, many of which burned in the fire (University of Washington). By the time the fire died out, twenty-five city blocks had been decimated, leaving Seattle without a downtown.
Rather than giving up and relocating, Seattle's businessmen banded together to rebuild the town. Most businessmen rebuilt on top of the ashes of their former business, but using more fire-resistant building materials and including improved plumbing to help prevent another disastrous fire.
The Seattle fire led to a number of improvements for the town. Most of the rats that had infested the commercial area were killed in the fire. The fire also led to a number of intentional improvements: some streets were raised to make the downtown more level, a professional fire department was established, and the town's plumbing system was taken out of private control and greatly improved.
Seattle's post-fire construction looked quite different from what had been there before. Following new construction ordinances, the new buildings were made of brick or stone rather than wood. The laws also limited the use of wooden decoration and the size of bay windows, so most of the post-fire construction appears relatively unornamented (Ochsner and Anderson). Examples of such buildings can be seen today in Seattle's Pioneer Square.
These new buildings went up fast, and Seattle experienced a boom that led to its establishment as the economic center of Washington State. Within one year after the fire, Seattle's population grew from 25,000 to 43,000 (Lange). This construction-fueled growth continued, and soon Seattle established its position as the economic center of Washington State.
Sources:
Crowley, Walt. "Seattle burns down in the Great Fire on June 6, 1889." 2003. HistoryLink.org. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=out put.cfm&file_id=5115.
"The Great Seattle Fire." University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections. http://content.lib.washington.edu/extras/seattle-fir e.html.
"The Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889." NWtravel Magazine Online. http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3179.html.
Lange, Greg. "Seattle's Great Fire." 1999. HistoryLink.org. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=out put.cfm&File_Id=715.
Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl and Dennis Alan Anderson. "How the Great Fire changed Seattle's architecture." 2003. A&E Perspectives. http://www.djc.com/news/ae/11151119.html.