Pioneer Square

Pioneer Square is Seattle’s oldest neighborhood, twenty city blocks of preserved redbrick history. And what a history it is!

In 1852, the Denny party arrived and wintered at Alki Beach, crossed the bay, relocated to the Pioneer Square area and began to divide up the land. Maynard, another early settler, gave part of his land to Henry Yesler, who constructed a steam-powered lumber mill. Fallen trees were hauled, or skidde, down a steep slope to the mill. (That route, now Yesler Way, was originally know as Skid Road. In a slightly altered form, this term spread across the country. Residents began to refer to rough-and-tumble neighborhoods in the cities as “Skid Row.”)

Great Fire of 1889 and Underground Seattle   Seventeen years after members of the Denny party set up camp, Seattle was officially incorporated. By 1889, 40,000 residents were crowded into a jumble of wood-framed homes and stores. Most of these structures were destroyed by fire in June 6 of that year, when an overheated glue pot spilled in a furniture maker’s shop. A unique plan for reconstruction was devised involving bringing a high-pressure hoses to wash down 200-foot cliffs, raising the elevation of Pioneer Square up to 10 feet above sea level. By the time this project was completed and new sidewalks laid, many businesses had already been rebuilt over the fire rubble, at the original street level.

Residents shopped in these basement-level locations from 1892 until 1908 when bubonic plague threatened the city. Officials took several steps to help prevent the spread of the disease, one of which was to require residents to carry a gun whenever they visited the outhouse, in case they encountered a rat. Under another new law, the underground buildings were sealed with cement. New stores were built above them.

When the threat of disease diminished, Underground Seattle briefly reopened as a site for speakeasies, gambling parlors, and bordellos. During World War II, officials shut down this “sin city.” These stores and corridors were empty for several years before organized tours through the buried historical sites began in 1965.

Prosperity, Decline, Prosperity Once More    Meanwhile, the area thrived. A steamship arrived in 1897 with news and hard evidence of the Klondike gold rush in Alaska. Prospectors bought their provisions in Seattle and then set sail from local docks. By 1914 the Smith Tower, “the tallest building west of the Mississippi,” loomed above Pioneer Square. Almost as soon as the area gained this prominence it began to lose it, as more and more businesses relocated to the north in what is now the commercial core of Seattle.

The creation of a historic preservation district in 1970 sparked the area’s revival as an arts and crafts center, tourist mecca, restaurant district, urban lofts and condominiums, and stadiums that house Seattle’s professional football and baseball teams.  Today, Pioneer Square is charming with tree-lined streets and cobblestone plazas and is one of the prettiest downtown neighborhoods in all of Seattle.

Excepted from John Owen’s excellent guide, Walking Seattle,  Falcon Publishing, @2000.