Sea Palm Treasures: Underground Tour

A while ago, I took a little trip, down the mighty mississip, whoops sorry, got going on another song there, and you're welcome for the earworm. giggle

I was in Seattle, a city I've driven through many times over the years and never had a chance to stop and sightsee in.

Not this time. I took a couple of days, and explored, a little. A friend had suggested I take the Underground Seattle tour.

Seattle downtown before the fire Seattle - before the fire

I'd never heard of it and the thought intrigued me, so I did a little research, found a parking spot down by Pioneer Square and then booked a tour with Bill Speidel's Underground Seattle tour. And had a blast. Our tour guide was a hoot and told lots of great stories, some of which might actually be true. Or at least have some slight resemblance to reality. Just kidding, I did more research after the tour and discovered that while our tour guide might have embellished a little the basic facts were there.

Drawings showing how they were raising the streets

I also took lots and lots of pictures, with my camera.

You can read more about Underground Seattle history, here and here.

As I recall our very humorous guide telling the story, when Seattle was first built, it was built on a flood plain, which of course means it was subject to flooding. According to our guide, this was exacerbated by this new found invention by Thomas Crapper, the toilet. People loved to flush, and this meant that most everything got flushed into the bay. Then the catastrophe, a devastating fire happened, when an un-watched pot of glue boiled over and set the town on fire. This took out almost the entire downtown. Over 25 blocks burned. Including this department store, where you can see an original Thomas Crapper hanging on the wall of a woman's restroom.

An original washroom, from a now defunct department store.

The town had to be rebuilt asap, but funds were low. The powers that be, decided that despite this unfortunate happening, there was a silver lining. They decided to raise the entire downtown by 12 to 30 feet higher than the original buildings. This meant that many of the building storefront's first story were now in the basement, as it were. And no more flooding. Well, rebuilding is expensive, and while many of the merchants had done well previously, they simply did not have the funds to rebuild. According to my tour guide, there was one class of merchants who did have the funds to rebuild and they were more than happy to lend the other merchants the money.
These particular merchants were none other than the original Entrepreneurs, ladies of the evening, soiled doves, or prostitutes, if you will. They'd stashed their cash, and made it available to whoever wanted to rebuild. The rebuilding began. However, people still needed to shop for necessities, and some of the merchants built ladders and steps up to the new surface so that people could still buy stuff. Can you imagine climbing this in long skirts carrying your purchases? I can't.

And the tunnels also needed light so people could see where they were going, so they put in a form of skylight. Glass prisms were embedded in the new sidewalks which in turn let light down into the passageways. You can still see and walk on them in the sidewalks up above. Many of the original prisms have turned into an amethyst color over the years.

The original arches are still evident in many of the passageways.
This tour has not been 'prettied' up, and much of the detritus of the previous century is still evident around.
Over the years, a large portion of the underground was host to the homeless, many hotels and other businesses used their former first floor, now basement, for storage and during prohibition, many barrels of illicit booze was stored here as well. In other words, bootleggers used the underground for their business as well.

Here's a few more pictures of the tour.