Seattle Underground
I just can't get over the Seattle Underground.
Already, Pike's Market and the rolling hills of streets downtown made an impression: Seattle is a maze. With several levels of Pike's Market that don't seem to fall one right on top of another and with entrances and exits for the same building on different floors, it takes some getting used to figuring out where you really are. It seems the Seattle Public Library represents the city planning in its own architecture (with its somewhat disturbing color scheme--red halls that look like the inside of the body's circulatory system--and unpredictable locations of stairs and elevators).
After going on the Bill Speidel's Underground Tour, and finding out why the city has so many levels. The Wikipedia describes it:
"On June 6, 1889, most of Seattle's central business district burned to the ground in the Great Seattle Fire.
It was decided to rebuild the city one to two stories higher than the original street grade, as Pioneer Square had been built mostly on filled-in tidelands and often flooded. The new street level also assisted in ensuring that gravity-assisted flush toilets didn't back up during high tide in Elliott Bay.
Several city blocks in the downtown region were enclosed with brick and timber barricades and the pavements between were raised. This left sidewalks and some storefronts as much as 36 feet below street level.
For a time, pedestrians climbed ladders to go between street level and building entrances, but eventually the building entrances were raised, and the old sidewalks covered over, creating the area now called the Seattle Underground. Merchants carried on business in the lowest floors of buildings that survived the fire, and pedestrians continued to use the underground sidewalks lit by glass cubes (still seen on some streets) embedded in the grade level sidewalk above. In 1907 the city condemned the Underground for fear of bubonic plague, two years before the 1909 World Fair in Seattle (Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition). The basements were left to deteriorate or were used as storage. In some cases, they illegally became flophouses for the homeless, gambling halls, speakeasies, and opium dens.
Only a small part of the Seattle Underground has been restored and made safe and accessible to the general public." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground_Tour
Furthermore, the Underground Tour relates the history of plumbing in Seattle. Because of the water pressure from being so close to the Sound, when a person went to flush a toilet, the water would spew up, out of the toilet. As a result, they had to put the toilet higher about ground level (the science of all this is beyond me).
Its just so fascinating!
I just can't get over the Seattle Underground.
Already, Pike's Market and the rolling hills of streets downtown made an impression: Seattle is a maze. With several levels of Pike's Market that don't seem to fall one right on top of another and with entrances and exits for the same building on different floors, it takes some getting used to figuring out where you really are. It seems the Seattle Public Library represents the city planning in its own architecture (with its somewhat disturbing color scheme--red halls that look like the inside of the body's circulatory system--and unpredictable locations of stairs and elevators).
After going on the Bill Speidel's Underground Tour, and finding out why the city has so many levels. The Wikipedia describes it:
"On June 6, 1889, most of Seattle's central business district burned to the ground in the Great Seattle Fire.
It was decided to rebuild the city one to two stories higher than the original street grade, as Pioneer Square had been built mostly on filled-in tidelands and often flooded. The new street level also assisted in ensuring that gravity-assisted flush toilets didn't back up during high tide in Elliott Bay.
Several city blocks in the downtown region were enclosed with brick and timber barricades and the pavements between were raised. This left sidewalks and some storefronts as much as 36 feet below street level.
For a time, pedestrians climbed ladders to go between street level and building entrances, but eventually the building entrances were raised, and the old sidewalks covered over, creating the area now called the Seattle Underground. Merchants carried on business in the lowest floors of buildings that survived the fire, and pedestrians continued to use the underground sidewalks lit by glass cubes (still seen on some streets) embedded in the grade level sidewalk above. In 1907 the city condemned the Underground for fear of bubonic plague, two years before the 1909 World Fair in Seattle (Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition). The basements were left to deteriorate or were used as storage. In some cases, they illegally became flophouses for the homeless, gambling halls, speakeasies, and opium dens.
Only a small part of the Seattle Underground has been restored and made safe and accessible to the general public." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground_Tour
Furthermore, the Underground Tour relates the history of plumbing in Seattle. Because of the water pressure from being so close to the Sound, when a person went to flush a toilet, the water would spew up, out of the toilet. As a result, they had to put the toilet higher about ground level (the science of all this is beyond me).
Its just so fascinating!
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