History of Seattle
Encyclopedia
This is the main article of a series that covers the history of Seattle
, Washington, a city
in the Pacific Northwest
region of the United States of America
.
Seattle is a major port city that has a history of boom and bust. Seattle has on several occasions been sent into severe decline, but has typically used those periods to successfully rebuild infrastructure. There have been at least five such cycles:
What is now Seattle has been inhabited since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8,000 B.C.—10,000 years ago), for at least 4,000 years. In the mid 1850s the Coast Salish
peoples of what is now called the Duwamish Tribe and Suquamish, as well as other associated groups and tribes, were living in some 13 villages within the present-day city limits of Seattle. Evidence of continuous human habitation of a village site within the current city limits of the city of Seattle dating back to the 6th century C.E. exists on the Port of Seattle Terminal 107 site, located on the Western bank of the Duwamish River. The site was abandoned in approximately 1800, for unknown reasons. Other notable village sites include the birthplace of Chief Seattle
, which was located near the current footprint of the King Street Station.
George Vancouver
was the first Europe
an to visit the Seattle area in May 1792 during his 1791-95 expedition
to chart the Pacific Northwest
.
The founding of Seattle is usually dated from the arrival of the Denny Party
scouts in September 25, 1851. However, Luther Collins, Henry Van Asselt, and the Maple family founded a farming settlement on what is currently the Seattle neighborhood of Georgetown in September 27, 1851. The Denny party's original site was an unfinished cabin, without roof, and a camp site, located at Alki Point, in West Seattle. The Collins party settlement was improved with permanent structures, and was soon producing produce and meat for sale and barter. In April, 1852, Arthur A. Denny
abandoned the original site at Alki in favor of a better protected site on Elliott Bay
that is now part of downtown Seattle. Arthur A. Denny
and Luther Collins were the first commissioners of King County after its creation in 1852. Around the same time, David Swinson "Doc" Maynard
began settling the land immediately south of Denny's.
Seattle in its early decades relied on the timber industry, shipping logs (and later, milled timber) to San Francisco. A climax forest of trees up to 1,000–2,000 years old and towering as high as nearly 400 ft (100 m) covered much of what is now Seattle. Today, none of that size remain anywhere in the world.
When Henry Yesler
brought the first steam sawmill to the region, he chose a location on the waterfront where Maynard and Denny's plats met. Thereafter Seattle would dominate the lumber industry.
Charlie Terry sold out Alki (which, after his departure barely held on as a settlement), moved to Seattle and began acquiring land. He either owned or partially owned Seattle's first timber ships. He eventually gave a land grant to the University of the Territory of Washington (later University of Washington
), and was instrumental in the politics to establish an urban infrastructure.
The logging town developed rapidly over decades into a small city. Despite being officially founded by the Methodists of the Denny Party, Seattle quickly developed a reputation as a wide-open town, a haven for prostitution
, liquor, and gambling
. Some attribute this, at least in part, to Maynard who realised that you needed something to bring the loggers and sailors, who formed the majority of the surounding population, to town.
Real estate
records show that nearly all of the city's first 60 businesses were on, or immediately adjacent to, Maynard's plat.
All of this occurred against a background of sometimes rocky relations with the local Native American
population, including a nominally pitched battle, the Battle of Seattle
, January 25, 1856.
Seattle was incorporated as a town January 14, 1865. That charter was voided January 18, 1867, in response to questionable activities of the town's elected leaders. Seattle was re-incorporated December 2, 1869. At the times of incorporations, the population was approximately 350 and 1,000, respectively.
In 1867, a young French Canadian
Catholic priest named Francis X. Prefontaine
arrived in Seattle and decided to establish a parish
there. At that time, Seattle had no Catholic church and few parishioners. Fr. Prefontaine counted only ten Catholics in the town and only three attended the first mass that he conducted. His bishop, Augustin-Magloire Blanchet
, whose cathedra
was in Vancouver, Washington
, gave Fr. Prefontaine permission to build a church there, as long as the priest could raise the funds himself and it would cost the diocese
nothing. Prefontaine raised the money by holding fairs around the Puget Sound area. During 1868–69 he built the church, doing much of the work himself, and in 1869 he opened Seattle’s first Catholic church at Third Avenue and Washington Street, on the site where the present-day Prefontaine Building stands.47.601375°N 122.329498°W
On July 14, 1873 the Northern Pacific Railway
announced that they had chosen the then-village of Tacoma
over Seattle as the Western terminus of their transcontinental railroad. The railroad barons appear to have been gambling on the advantage they could gain from being able to buy up the land around their terminus cheaply instead of bringing the railroad into a more established Pacific port town.
Seattle made several attempts to build a railroad of its own or to leverage one to come. The Great Northern Railway finally came to Seattle in 1884, winning Seattle a place in competition for freight, though it would be 1906 before Seattle finally acquired a major rail passenger terminal.
Seattle in this era was a freebooting and often relatively lawless town. Although it boasted newspaper
s and telephone
s, lynch law often prevailed (there were at least four deaths by lynching
in 1882), school
s barely operated, and indoor plumbing
was a rare novelty. In the low mudflat
s where much of the city was built, sewage
was almost as likely to come in on the tide
as to flow away. The streets were potholed, to the point where there was at least one fatal drowning
.
Union
organizing first arrived in the form of a skilled craft union. In 1882, Seattle printers formed the Seattle Typographical Union Local 202. Dockworkers followed in 1886, cigar
makers in 1887, tailors in 1889, and both brewers and musicians in 1890. Even the newsboys unionized in 1892, followed by more organizing, mostly of craft unions.
The history of labor in the American West in this period is inseparable from the issue of anti-Chinese vigilantism. In 1883 Chinese laborers played a key role in the first effort at digging the Montlake Cut
to connect Lake Union
's Portage Bay
to Lake Washington
's Union Bay. In 1885-1886, whites—sometimes in combination with Indians—complaining of overly cheap labor competition, drove the Chinese settlers from Seattle, Tacoma, and other Northwest cities.
In an era during which the Washington Territory was one of the first parts of the U.S. to (briefly) allow women's suffrage
, women played a significant part in "civilizing" Seattle.
The first bathtub with plumbing was in 1870. In the 1880s, Seattle got its first streetcar and cable car
, ferry
service, a YMCA
gymnasium, and the exclusive Rainier Club
, and passed an ordinance requiring attached sewer
lines for all new residences. It also began to develop a road system.
The relative fortunes of Seattle and Tacoma clearly show the nature of Seattle's growth. Though both Seattle and Tacoma grew at a rapid rate from 1880 to 1890, based on the strength of their timber industries, Seattle's growth as an exporter of services and manufactured goods continued for another two decades, while Tacoma's growth dropped almost to zero. The reason for this lies in Tacoma's nature as a company town and Seattle's successful avoidance of that condition.
The early Seattle era came to a stunning halt with the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889. Started by a glue pot, the fire burned 29 city blocks (almost entirely wooden buildings; about 10 brick
buildings also burned). It destroyed nearly the entire business district, all of the railroad terminals, and all but four of the wharves
. Major fires like this were common in Washington that summer: the center of Ellensburg
was destroyed by fire on July 4 and downtown Spokane
burned on August 4.
Thanks in part to credit arranged by Jacob Furth
, Seattle rebuilt from the ashes with astounding rapidity. A new zoning
code resulted in a downtown of brick and stone
buildings, rather than wood
. In the single year after the fire, the city grew from 25,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, largely because of the enormous number of construction
jobs suddenly created.
Still, south of Yesler Way, the open city atmosphere remained.
. Seattle, as well as the rest of the nation, was suffering from the economic panic of 1893
, and to a lesser extent, the panic of 1896
. Gold was discovered in August 1896 in the Klondike region of Canada. Almost one year later, on July 17, 1897, the steamer Portland arrived at Schwabacher's Wharf in Seattle. A publicity campaign engineered largely by Erastus Brainerd
told the world of the Portland's "ton of gold," started the Klondike gold rush, and established Seattle as its supply center and the jumping-off point for transportation to and from Alaska and the gold fields of the Yukon. The rush ended the depression overnight for Seattle. The miners
mined the gold. Seattle mined the miners.
The gold rush led to massive immigration. Many of Seattle's neighborhoods got their start around this time. Downtown Seattle was bustling with activity; as quickly as previous inhabitants moved out to newly created neighborhoods, new immigrants came in to take their place in the city core.
Once the obvious extensions of downtown had been made along the flatlands to the north and south, streetcars began providing transportation to new outlying neighborhoods.
Following the vision of city engineer R.H. Thomson
, who had already played a key role in the development of municipal utilities, a massive effort
was made to level the steep hills that rose south and north of the bustling city. A seawall
containing spoils (dirt
) sluiced from the Denny Regrade created the current waterfront. More spoils from the Denny Regrade went to build the industrial Harbor Island
at the mouth of the Duwamish River
, south of Downtown.
The Denny Regrade wasn't the only radical reshaping of Seattle's topography in this period. The slightly earlier Jackson Regrade had already reshaped Pioneer Square
and the International District
. The 1911–1917 construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal
included two major "cuts" (the Montlake Cut
and the Fremont Cut
), four bascule bridge
s, and the Government Locks (now Hiram M. Chittenden Locks
). The level of Lake Washington dropped; the Black River
, which formerly ran out of the south end of the lake, dried up completely, and Seward Island became the Seward Peninsula, now the site of Seward Park
.
All of the expansion was happening without zoning, leading to "different land uses and economic classes everywhere [being] mixed."
At the same time as the city was expanding dramatically, the city planners began to put in parks and boulevards under a plan designed by the Olmsted
Firm, providing numerous parks and about twenty miles of boulevard which link most of the parks and greenbelts within the city limits. Much of the ambiance of Seattle today derives from this project.
Where there had so recently been wilderness, increasingly there was the reality of a major city. The Seattle Symphony
was founded in 1903, and while few, if any, other comparably important arts institutions were established, the story was different in more popular entertainments. Vaudeville
impresarios Alexander Pantages
, John Considine
, and John Cort
(the last also involved in legitimate theater
) were all based in Seattle in this era.
Seattle trumpeted and celebrated its rise with the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition
of 1909, but the city's rapid growth had led to much questioning of the social order. Not only the labor left, but also progressives
calling for "good government" challenged the hegemony of the captains of industry. Rail baron James J. Hill
, addressing Seattle business leaders in 1909, noted and regretted the change. "Where," he asked, "are the man who used to match your mountains…?"
to create a development plan for the whole city. However, the result, known as the Bogue plan, was never to be implemented. The unused plan had at its heart a grand civic center in Belltown
and the Denny Regrade
connected to the rest of the city by a rapid transit rail system, with a huge expansion of the park system, crowned by a total conversion of 4000 acres (16.2 km²) Mercer Island
into parkland. However, the plan was defeated by an alliance of fiscal conservatives who opposed such a grandiose plan on general principles and populists who argued that the plan would mainly benefit the rich.
Growth during this 1910s was almost all in lumber and maritime industries. With the Atlantic
a scene of belligerency, World War I
increased Pacific
maritime trade and caused a boom in shipbuilding, there was very little growth in new industries. When the war ended, economic output crashed as the government stopped buying boats, and there were no new industries to pick up the slack. Seattle stopped being the place of explosive growth and opportunity it had been for two consecutive decades.
After the war, Western Washington was a center of radical labor agitation. Most dramatically, in 1919, a dispute over post-war lowering of waterfront wages spread to become the Seattle General Strike. The Industrial Workers of the World
played a prominent role in the strike. Seattle mayor Ole Hanson
became a prominent figure in the First Red Scare
, and made an unsuccessful attempt to ride that backlash to the White House
in an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for the presidential election of 1920
.
Although no longer the economic powerhouse it had been at the turn of the century, Seattle first began seriously to be an arts center in the 1920s. The Frye and Henry families put on public display the collections that would become the core of the Frye Art Museum
and Henry Art Gallery
, respectively. Australia
n painter Ambrose Patterson arrived in 1919; over the next few decades Mark Tobey
, Morris Graves
, Kenneth Callahan
, Guy Irving Anderson, and Paul Horiuchi
would establish themselves as nationally and internationally known artists. Bandleader Vic Meyers
and others kept the speakeasies
jumping through the Prohibition
era, and by mid-century the thriving jazz scene in the city's Skid Road
district would launch the careers of such luminaries as Ray Charles
and Quincy Jones
.
In 1924, Seattle's Sand Point Airfield was the endpoint of the first aerial circumnavigation
of the world. The historic flight helped convince Congress to develop Sand Point as a Naval Air Station.
The Great Depression
hit Seattle hard. For example, Seattle issued 2,538 permits for housing construction in 1930, but only 361 in 1932. During the Maritime Strike of 1934, Smith Cove
was nearly a battle zone; shippers were scared, to the point where Seattle lost most of its Asian trade to Los Angeles
.
From World War II
until 1970, Seattle underwent what amounted to a long, sustained economic boom, although not without occasional reverses. Boeing
was hiring, the economy was booming, and while there had been no successful regional planning, the city had not yet grown quite large enough to feel the strain.
The Boeing airplane company grew out of the fortune of William "Bill" Boeing
's boat company and his fascination with aircraft and flying. During World War I, Boeing grew to employ "about four thousand people, with sales just under ten million dollars a year, it was a good if unspectacular business for Seattle." The company struggled through the period between the wars, and "began to build dressers, counters and furniture for a corset company and a confectioner's shop, as well as flat-bottomed boats called sea sleds
". However, when World War II started, the government suddenly desired tens of thousands of planes a year, and Boeing was positioned to provide them. Working under fixed-fee contracts, Boeing churned out aircraft and became by far the largest employer in Seattle.
When the war ended, "the military canceled its bomber orders; Boeing factories shut down and 70,000 people lost their jobs," and initially it appeared that Seattle had little to show for the wartime Boeing boom. However, this period of stagnation soon ended with the rise of the jet aircraft
and Boeing's reincarnation as the world's leading producer of commercial passenger planes.
At the same time, the freeways were being built to compensate for all this new growth. Most of the "Eastside
" (east of Lake Washington
) and northern suburbs came into being during the Boeing boom, as did Interstate Highways (I-5
and I-90
). I-5 neatly cut off Downtown Seattle from Capitol Hill
and First Hill
. Part of the historic downtown, including the tony Sorrento Hotel, was left stranded on the "wrong" side of the freeway. Freeway Park
was eventually built over I-5 in 1976, restoring something of a link between Downtown and First Hill.
With all this postwar growth came growing pollution of the lakes and rivers that provided much of beauty that had been Seattle's appeal to its recent immigrants. Also, the sprawl constantly demanded more roads, since the ones already built had terrible traffic. Jim Ellis
and other Seattle natives, anxious to preserve the city in which they grew up, came together to institute the Metropolitan Problems Committee, or METRO, intended to manage and plan the metropolitan area. The original, comprehensive METRO regional plan was defeated in a vote by the suburbanites;
METRO came back, scaled down to a sewage treatment and transport organization; METRO was eventually merged into the King County government.
During this period, Seattle attempted to counter the decline of its downtown and the area immediately to the north by hosting the Century 21 Exposition
, the 1962 World's Fair
. The fair, given a futuristic science theme, was designed to leave behind a civic center, now known as Seattle Center
, including arts buildings, the Pacific Science Center
and the Space Needle
, and serving also as a fairground.
In conjunction with the fair, a demonstration monorail
line was constructed at no cost to the city and was paid for out of ticket sales, and then turned over to the city for $
600,000. (See Seattle Center Monorail
.) It is now mostly a tourist attraction. The World's Fair arguably reenergized the downtown of Seattle, and was generally a smashing success, even finishing with a profit.
After the war, the University of Washington also took a step forward, finally fulfilling the promise of its name under university president Charles Odegaard
.
program, "the Boeing workforce was cut from 80,400 to 37,200 between early 1970 and October 1971". During the resulting economic bust, a famous Seattle billboard sarcastically requested, "Would the last person leaving SEATTLE — turn out the lights?" Nonetheless, only 15% of those laid off eventually left the city.
After 1973, Seattle was in good company for its recession, since the rest of the country was also experiencing the energy crisis. Quite likely, Seattle evaded the fate of Detroit through being a port city with a large number of highly educated skilled workers, though the boom decades of the 1950s and 1960s had come to a decisive end.
The Pike Place Market
, arguably Seattle's most important tourist attraction, gained its modern form in the aftermath of the Boeing crash. The internment of the Japanese
from Seattle during World War II had hit the market particularly hard, since 80% of its "wet stall" vendors had been ethnically Japanese. A "Keep the Market" initiative led by architect Victor Steinbrueck
, passed in 1971, pushing for adaptive reuse
. The project was wildly successful in spite of intense opposition by the Seattle Establishment, and today the Pike Place Market pulls nine million visitors each year.
A similar story occurred with Pioneer Square. An old neighborhood, largely built after the Fire of 1889, it had fallen into derelict status after the war. However, with a reenergized downtown, businesses started to look for buildings that could be acquired cheaply. When offices moved into renovated buildings, suddenly there was a market for facilities to service them, leading to a "flood of other restaurants, galleries, boutiques." Seattle was definitely recovering from the blow dealt by the Boeing recession, refilling areas that had threatened to become slums.
Starting in the late 1950s, Seattle was one of the centers of the emergence of the American counter-culture and culture of protest. Before grunge
there were beats
, fringies (a local Seattle term), hippie
s, and batcavers
.
and Paul Allen
, founders of Microsoft
, Inc., moved their then-small company from Albuquerque, New Mexico
, to the suburbs of their native Seattle. By 1985, sales were over $140 million, by 1990, $1.18 billion, and by 1995, Microsoft was the world's most profitable corporation, Allen and Gates were billionaires, and literally thousands of their past and present employees were millionaires.
Microsoft spawned a host of other companies in the Seattle area: millionaire employees often left to found their own companies, and Allen, after his own departure from Microsoft, became a major investor in new companies. Seattle-area companies that owe their origins at least indirectly to Microsoft include RealNetworks
, AttachmateWRQ, InfoSpace
, and a host of others. Quite unlike Boeing, Microsoft has served as a catalyst for the creation of a whole realm of industry. Microsoft has also taken a much more active hand than Boeing in public works in the area, donating software to many schools (including the University of Washington).
Seattle has also been experiencing quite good growth in the biotechnology
and coffee
sectors, and Seattle-based Nordstrom
is now a national brand.
Paul Allen, whose fortune was made through Microsoft though he has long since ceased to be an active participant in the company, has been a major force in Seattle politics, for better or worse. He attempted a voter initiative to build the Seattle Commons, a huge park in South Lake Union and the Cascade District, and even offered to put up his own money to endow a security force for the park, but it was defeated at the polls. (Allen is now the leader of the movement to redevelop this same area as a biotech center.) He did get a football stadium for the Seattle Seahawks
through a successful statewide ballot initiative, and founded the Experience Music Project
(originally intended as a Jimi Hendrix
museum) on the grounds of Seattle Center.
Seattle's bid for the world stage by hosting the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 did not play out as planned. Instead, the city saw became the site of the first great street confrontation between the anti-globalization movement
and the World Trade Organization
on November 30, 1999. While many of those in the streets, and most of those in the suites, were from out of town or even out of country, much of the groundwork of Seattle hosting both the event and the protests against it can be attributed to local forces.
Seattle today is physically and demographically not so different from the Seattle of the 1960s. It is still filled with single family households, still mostly white with as many Asians as blacks, still progressive, still with about half a million people, still almost entirely without a centralized method of planning. The suburbs have grown, but they are also in essentially the same state as before, if a little more independent. Seattle's economy is more vibrant now, and richer, and there is certainly an increase in cultural activity, but the largest employer is still Boeing. The Commons was defeated, just as Jim Ellis was in the 1960s. Pioneer Square still retains some of the ambience of Skid Road. There's still terrible traffic on the freeways, air quality is problematic. The city, or its setting, is still physically beautiful.
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, Washington, a city
City
A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...
in the Pacific Northwest
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...
region of the United States of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Seattle is a major port city that has a history of boom and bust. Seattle has on several occasions been sent into severe decline, but has typically used those periods to successfully rebuild infrastructure. There have been at least five such cycles:
- The lumberLumberLumber or timber is wood in any of its stages from felling through readiness for use as structural material for construction, or wood pulp for paper production....
-industry boom, followed by the construction of an OlmstedFrederick Law OlmstedFrederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
-designed park system. - The Klondike gold rushKlondike Gold RushThe Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
started in 1896, but reached Seattle in July 1897. This constituted the largest boom for Seattle proportional to the city's size at the time, and ended the economic woes Seattle (and the nation) had been suffering since the Panic of 1893Panic of 1893The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
. - The shipbuildingShipbuildingShipbuilding is the construction of ships and floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to before recorded history.Shipbuilding and ship repairs, both...
boom, which peaked during World War IWorld War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and crashed immediately thereafter, followed by the unused city development plan of Virgil BogueVirgil BogueVirgil Gay Bogue was born in Norfolk, New York, on July 20, 1846. He received a degree in civil engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, in 1868. Bogue worked consecutively on Oroya Railway in Peru to 1879, the Northern Pacific Railway to 1886...
. - The BoeingBoeingThe Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
boom, followed by general infrastructure building. - Most recently, the boom based on MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
and other software, webWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, and telecommunications companies, such as Amazon.comAmazon.comAmazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
, AT&T WirelessAT&T WirelessAT&T Wireless Services, Inc., founded in 1987 as McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc., and now legally known as New Cingular Wireless Services, Inc., formerly part of AT&T Corp., is a wireless telephone carrier in the United States, based in Redmond, Washington, and later traded on the New York...
, and RealNetworksRealNetworksRealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of Internet media delivery software and services based in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The company is the creator of RealAudio, a compressed audio format; RealVideo, a compressed video format; RealPlayer, a media player; RealDownloader, a download...
; although the aforementioned companies remain relatively strong, the boom definitely ended in 2000.
Early history of Seattle
Coast Salish
Coast Salish languages are a subgroup of the Salishan language family. These languages are spoken by First Nations or Native American peoples inhabiting the territory that is now the southwest coast of British Columbia around the Strait of Georgia and Washington state around Puget Sound...
peoples of what is now called the Duwamish Tribe and Suquamish, as well as other associated groups and tribes, were living in some 13 villages within the present-day city limits of Seattle. Evidence of continuous human habitation of a village site within the current city limits of the city of Seattle dating back to the 6th century C.E. exists on the Port of Seattle Terminal 107 site, located on the Western bank of the Duwamish River. The site was abandoned in approximately 1800, for unknown reasons. Other notable village sites include the birthplace of Chief Seattle
Chief Seattle
Chief Seattle , was a Dkhw’Duw’Absh chief, also known as Sealth, Seathle, Seathl, or See-ahth. A prominent figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers, forming a personal relationship with David Swinson "Doc" Maynard. Seattle, Washington was named after him...
, which was located near the current footprint of the King Street Station.
George Vancouver
George Vancouver
Captain George Vancouver RN was an English officer of the British Royal Navy, best known for his 1791-95 expedition, which explored and charted North America's northwestern Pacific Coast regions, including the coasts of contemporary Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon...
was the first Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an to visit the Seattle area in May 1792 during his 1791-95 expedition
Vancouver Expedition
The Vancouver Expedition was a four-and-a-half-year voyage of exploration and diplomacy, commanded by Captain George Vancouver. The expedition circumnavigated the globe, touched five continents and changed the course of history for the indigenous nations and several European empires and their...
to chart the Pacific Northwest
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...
.
The founding of Seattle is usually dated from the arrival of the Denny Party
Denny Party
The Denny Party is a group of white pioneers credited with founding Seattle, Washington because they settled at Alki Point on November 13, 1851.A wagon party headed by Arthur A. Denny left Cherry Grove, Illinois on April 10, 1851...
scouts in September 25, 1851. However, Luther Collins, Henry Van Asselt, and the Maple family founded a farming settlement on what is currently the Seattle neighborhood of Georgetown in September 27, 1851. The Denny party's original site was an unfinished cabin, without roof, and a camp site, located at Alki Point, in West Seattle. The Collins party settlement was improved with permanent structures, and was soon producing produce and meat for sale and barter. In April, 1852, Arthur A. Denny
Arthur A. Denny
Arthur Armstrong Denny was present at the founding of Seattle, Washington, the acknowledged leader of the pioneer Denny Party, and later the city's wealthiest citizen and a 9-term member of the territorial legislature...
abandoned the original site at Alki in favor of a better protected site on Elliott Bay
Elliott Bay
Elliott Bay is the body of water on which Seattle, Washington, is located. A line drawn from Alki Point in the south to West Point in the north serves to mark the generally accepted division between the bay and the open sound...
that is now part of downtown Seattle. Arthur A. Denny
Arthur A. Denny
Arthur Armstrong Denny was present at the founding of Seattle, Washington, the acknowledged leader of the pioneer Denny Party, and later the city's wealthiest citizen and a 9-term member of the territorial legislature...
and Luther Collins were the first commissioners of King County after its creation in 1852. Around the same time, David Swinson "Doc" Maynard
David Swinson Maynard
David Swinson "Doc" Maynard was an American pioneer and doctor, and one of Seattle's primary founders. He was an effective civic booster and, compared to other white settlers, a relative advocate of Native American rights...
began settling the land immediately south of Denny's.
Seattle in its early decades relied on the timber industry, shipping logs (and later, milled timber) to San Francisco. A climax forest of trees up to 1,000–2,000 years old and towering as high as nearly 400 ft (100 m) covered much of what is now Seattle. Today, none of that size remain anywhere in the world.
When Henry Yesler
Henry Yesler
Henry L. Yesler was an entrepreneur considered to be Seattle, Washington's first economic father and first millionaire. He arrived in Seattle in 1852 and built a steam-powered sawmill, which provided numerous jobs for those early settlers and Duwamish tribe members...
brought the first steam sawmill to the region, he chose a location on the waterfront where Maynard and Denny's plats met. Thereafter Seattle would dominate the lumber industry.
Charlie Terry sold out Alki (which, after his departure barely held on as a settlement), moved to Seattle and began acquiring land. He either owned or partially owned Seattle's first timber ships. He eventually gave a land grant to the University of the Territory of Washington (later University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
), and was instrumental in the politics to establish an urban infrastructure.
The logging town developed rapidly over decades into a small city. Despite being officially founded by the Methodists of the Denny Party, Seattle quickly developed a reputation as a wide-open town, a haven for prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, liquor, and gambling
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
. Some attribute this, at least in part, to Maynard who realised that you needed something to bring the loggers and sailors, who formed the majority of the surounding population, to town.
Real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
records show that nearly all of the city's first 60 businesses were on, or immediately adjacent to, Maynard's plat.
All of this occurred against a background of sometimes rocky relations with the local Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
population, including a nominally pitched battle, the Battle of Seattle
Battle of Seattle (1856)
The Battle of Seattle was a January 26, 1856 attack by native Americans upon Seattle, Washington. At the time, Seattle was a settlement in the Washington Territory that had recently named itself after Chief Seattle , a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples of central Puget Sound.Backed by...
, January 25, 1856.
Seattle was incorporated as a town January 14, 1865. That charter was voided January 18, 1867, in response to questionable activities of the town's elected leaders. Seattle was re-incorporated December 2, 1869. At the times of incorporations, the population was approximately 350 and 1,000, respectively.
In 1867, a young French Canadian
French Canadian
French Canadian or Francophone Canadian, , generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries...
Catholic priest named Francis X. Prefontaine
Francis X. Prefontaine
Monsignor Francis Xavier Prefontaine was a French Canadian priest and missionary, an early resident in the pioneer days of Seattle, Washington, and a figure in the history of Seattle and the Puget Sound region of Washington State...
arrived in Seattle and decided to establish a parish
Parish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...
there. At that time, Seattle had no Catholic church and few parishioners. Fr. Prefontaine counted only ten Catholics in the town and only three attended the first mass that he conducted. His bishop, Augustin-Magloire Blanchet
Augustin-Magloire Blanchet
Augustin Magloire Alexandre Blanchet was a French Canadian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest who served as the first bishop of the now-defunct Diocese of Walla Walla and of the Diocese of Nesqually...
, whose cathedra
Cathedra
A cathedra or bishop's throne is the chair or throne of a bishop. It is a symbol of the bishop's teaching authority in the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, and has in some sense remained such in the Anglican Communion and in Lutheran churches...
was in Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington. Incorporated in 1857, it is the fourth largest city in the state with a 2010 census population of 161,791 as of April 1, 2010...
, gave Fr. Prefontaine permission to build a church there, as long as the priest could raise the funds himself and it would cost the diocese
Diocese
A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...
nothing. Prefontaine raised the money by holding fairs around the Puget Sound area. During 1868–69 he built the church, doing much of the work himself, and in 1869 he opened Seattle’s first Catholic church at Third Avenue and Washington Street, on the site where the present-day Prefontaine Building stands.47.601375°N 122.329498°W
Railroad rivalry and encroaching civilization
Northern Pacific Railway
The Northern Pacific Railway was a railway that operated in the west along the Canadian border of the United States. Construction began in 1870 and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in...
announced that they had chosen the then-village of Tacoma
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...
over Seattle as the Western terminus of their transcontinental railroad. The railroad barons appear to have been gambling on the advantage they could gain from being able to buy up the land around their terminus cheaply instead of bringing the railroad into a more established Pacific port town.
Seattle made several attempts to build a railroad of its own or to leverage one to come. The Great Northern Railway finally came to Seattle in 1884, winning Seattle a place in competition for freight, though it would be 1906 before Seattle finally acquired a major rail passenger terminal.
Seattle in this era was a freebooting and often relatively lawless town. Although it boasted newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s and telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
s, lynch law often prevailed (there were at least four deaths by lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
in 1882), school
School
A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
s barely operated, and indoor plumbing
Plumbing
Plumbing is the system of pipes and drains installed in a building for the distribution of potable drinking water and the removal of waterborne wastes, and the skilled trade of working with pipes, tubing and plumbing fixtures in such systems. A plumber is someone who installs or repairs piping...
was a rare novelty. In the low mudflat
Mudflat
Mudflats or mud flats, also known as tidal flats, are coastal wetlands that form when mud is deposited by tides or rivers. They are found in sheltered areas such as bays, bayous, lagoons, and estuaries. Mudflats may be viewed geologically as exposed layers of bay mud, resulting from deposition of...
s where much of the city was built, sewage
Sewage
Sewage is water-carried waste, in solution or suspension, that is intended to be removed from a community. Also known as wastewater, it is more than 99% water and is characterized by volume or rate of flow, physical condition, chemical constituents and the bacteriological organisms that it contains...
was almost as likely to come in on the tide
Tide
Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the moon and the sun and the rotation of the Earth....
as to flow away. The streets were potholed, to the point where there was at least one fatal drowning
Drowning
Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....
.
Union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
organizing first arrived in the form of a skilled craft union. In 1882, Seattle printers formed the Seattle Typographical Union Local 202. Dockworkers followed in 1886, cigar
Cigar
A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, and the Eastern...
makers in 1887, tailors in 1889, and both brewers and musicians in 1890. Even the newsboys unionized in 1892, followed by more organizing, mostly of craft unions.
The history of labor in the American West in this period is inseparable from the issue of anti-Chinese vigilantism. In 1883 Chinese laborers played a key role in the first effort at digging the Montlake Cut
Montlake Cut
The Montlake Cut is the easternmost section of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which passes through the city of Seattle, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound. It is approximately long and wide. The center channel is wide and deep....
to connect Lake Union
Lake Union
Lake Union is a freshwater lake entirely within the Seattle, Washington city limits.-Origins:A glacial lake, its basin was dug 12,000 years ago by the Vashon glacier, which also created Lake Washington and Seattle's Green, Bitter, and Haller Lakes.-Name:...
's Portage Bay
Portage Bay
Portage Bay is an arm of Seattle, Washington's Lake Union and is part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Its western limit can be said to be the Ship Canal Bridge, which carries Interstate 5 over the water; North Passage Point Park and South Passage Point Park sit on opposite shores between the...
to Lake Washington
Lake Washington
Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It is bordered by the cities of Seattle on the west, Bellevue and Kirkland on the east, Renton on the south and...
's Union Bay. In 1885-1886, whites—sometimes in combination with Indians—complaining of overly cheap labor competition, drove the Chinese settlers from Seattle, Tacoma, and other Northwest cities.
In an era during which the Washington Territory was one of the first parts of the U.S. to (briefly) allow women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
, women played a significant part in "civilizing" Seattle.
The first bathtub with plumbing was in 1870. In the 1880s, Seattle got its first streetcar and cable car
Cable car (railway)
A cable car or cable railway is a mass transit system using rail cars that are hauled by a continuously moving cable running at a constant speed. Individual cars stop and start by releasing and gripping this cable as required...
, ferry
Ferry
A ferry is a form of transportation, usually a boat, but sometimes a ship, used to carry primarily passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo as well, across a body of water. Most ferries operate on regular, frequent, return services...
service, a YMCA
YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
gymnasium, and the exclusive Rainier Club
Rainier Club
The Rainier Club is a private club in Seattle, Washington; Priscilla Long of HistoryLink.org calls it "Seattle's preeminent private club." Its clubhouse building, completed in 1904, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was founded in 1888 in what was then the Washington Territory...
, and passed an ordinance requiring attached sewer
Sanitary sewer
A sanitary sewer is a separate underground carriage system specifically for transporting sewage from houses and commercial buildings to treatment or disposal. Sanitary sewers serving industrial areas also carry industrial wastewater...
lines for all new residences. It also began to develop a road system.
The relative fortunes of Seattle and Tacoma clearly show the nature of Seattle's growth. Though both Seattle and Tacoma grew at a rapid rate from 1880 to 1890, based on the strength of their timber industries, Seattle's growth as an exporter of services and manufactured goods continued for another two decades, while Tacoma's growth dropped almost to zero. The reason for this lies in Tacoma's nature as a company town and Seattle's successful avoidance of that condition.
The fire
The early Seattle era came to a stunning halt with the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889. Started by a glue pot, the fire burned 29 city blocks (almost entirely wooden buildings; about 10 brick
Brick
A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...
buildings also burned). It destroyed nearly the entire business district, all of the railroad terminals, and all but four of the wharves
Wharf
A wharf or quay is a structure on the shore of a harbor where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers.Such a structure includes one or more berths , and may also include piers, warehouses, or other facilities necessary for handling the ships.A wharf commonly comprises a fixed...
. Major fires like this were common in Washington that summer: the center of Ellensburg
Ellensburg, Washington
Ellensburg is a city in, and the county seat of, Kittitas County, Washington, United States. The population was 18,174 at the 2010 census. The population was 18,250 at 2011 Estimate from Office of Financial Management. Ellensburg is located just east of the Cascade Range on I-90 and is known as the...
was destroyed by fire on July 4 and downtown Spokane
Spokane, Washington
Spokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city of Spokane County of which it is also the county seat, and the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...
burned on August 4.
Thanks in part to credit arranged by Jacob Furth
Jacob Furth
Jacob Furth was an Austrian Empire-born American entrepreneur and prominent Seattle banker. He played a key role in consolidating Seattle's electric power and public transportation infrastructure, and was a member of Ohaveth Sholum Congregation, Seattle's first synagogue...
, Seattle rebuilt from the ashes with astounding rapidity. A new zoning
Zoning
Zoning is a device of land use planning used by local governments in most developed countries. The word is derived from the practice of designating permitted uses of land based on mapped zones which separate one set of land uses from another...
code resulted in a downtown of brick and stone
Rock (geology)
In geology, rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...
buildings, rather than wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
. In the single year after the fire, the city grew from 25,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, largely because of the enormous number of construction
Construction
In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...
jobs suddenly created.
Still, south of Yesler Way, the open city atmosphere remained.
The Klondike Gold Rush
The greatest boom period for Seattle occurred during the Klondike gold rushKlondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
. Seattle, as well as the rest of the nation, was suffering from the economic panic of 1893
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
, and to a lesser extent, the panic of 1896
Panic of 1896
The Panic of 1896 was an acute economic depression in the United States that was less serious than other panics of the era precipitated by a drop in silver reserves and market concerns on the effects it would have on the gold standard. Deflation of commodities prices drove the stock market to new...
. Gold was discovered in August 1896 in the Klondike region of Canada. Almost one year later, on July 17, 1897, the steamer Portland arrived at Schwabacher's Wharf in Seattle. A publicity campaign engineered largely by Erastus Brainerd
Erastus Brainerd
Erastus Brainerd was an American journalist and art museum curator. During the Yukon Gold Rush, he was the publicist who "sold the idea that Seattle was the Gateway to Alaska and the only such portal"....
told the world of the Portland's "ton of gold," started the Klondike gold rush, and established Seattle as its supply center and the jumping-off point for transportation to and from Alaska and the gold fields of the Yukon. The rush ended the depression overnight for Seattle. The miners
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
mined the gold. Seattle mined the miners.
Leader of the Northwest: 1900–1915
Once the obvious extensions of downtown had been made along the flatlands to the north and south, streetcars began providing transportation to new outlying neighborhoods.
Following the vision of city engineer R.H. Thomson
Reginald H. Thomson
Reginald Heber Thomson was a self-taught American civil engineer. He worked in Washington state, mainly in Seattle, where he became city engineer in 1892 and held the position for two decades. Alan J...
, who had already played a key role in the development of municipal utilities, a massive effort
Regrading in Seattle
The topography of central Seattle was radically altered by a series of regrades in the city's 1st century of urban settlement, in what might have been the largest such alteration of urban terrain at the time....
was made to level the steep hills that rose south and north of the bustling city. A seawall
Seawall
A seawall is a form of coastal defence constructed where the sea, and associated coastal processes, impact directly upon the landforms of the coast. The purpose of a seawall is to protect areas of human habitation, conservation and leisure activities from the action of tides and waves...
containing spoils (dirt
Soil
Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...
) sluiced from the Denny Regrade created the current waterfront. More spoils from the Denny Regrade went to build the industrial Harbor Island
Harbor Island
Harbor Island is an artificial island in the mouth of Seattle, Washington's Duwamish Waterway where it empties into Elliott Bay. Built by the Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company, Harbor Island was completed in 1909 and was then the largest artificial island in the world, at 350 acres...
at the mouth of the Duwamish River
Duwamish River
The Duwamish River is the name of the lower of Washington state's Green River. Its industrialized estuary is known as the Duwamish Waterway.- History :...
, south of Downtown.
The Denny Regrade wasn't the only radical reshaping of Seattle's topography in this period. The slightly earlier Jackson Regrade had already reshaped Pioneer Square
Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington
Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Downtown Seattle, Washington, USA. It was once the heart of the city: Seattle's founders settled there in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point on the far side of Elliott Bay. The early structures in the neighborhood...
and the International District
International District, Seattle, Washington
The Chinatown-International District of Seattle, Washington is an ethnic enclave neighborhood and is the center of Seattle's Asian American community. The neighborhood is multiethnic, consisting mainly of people who are of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino ethnicity...
. The 1911–1917 construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal
Lake Washington Ship Canal
The Lake Washington Ship Canal, which runs through the City of Seattle, Washington, connects the fresh water body of Lake Washington with the salt water inland sea of Puget Sound. The Ship Canal includes a series of locks, modeled after the Panama Canal, to accommodate the different water levels...
included two major "cuts" (the Montlake Cut
Montlake Cut
The Montlake Cut is the easternmost section of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which passes through the city of Seattle, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound. It is approximately long and wide. The center channel is wide and deep....
and the Fremont Cut
Fremont Cut
The Fremont Cut is a part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal—which passes through the U.S. city of Seattle, Washington, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound—that connects Lake Union to the east with Salmon Bay to the west. It is long and wide. The center channel is wide and deep...
), four bascule bridge
Bascule bridge
A bascule bridge is a moveable bridge with a counterweight that continuously balances the span, or "leaf," throughout the entire upward swing in providing clearance for boat traffic....
s, and the Government Locks (now Hiram M. Chittenden Locks
Hiram M. Chittenden Locks
The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks are a complex of locks that sit at the west end of Salmon Bay, part of Seattle's Lake Washington Ship Canal. They are known locally as the Ballard Locks after the neighborhood to their north...
). The level of Lake Washington dropped; the Black River
Black River (Duwamish River)
The Black River, also known as the Duwamish River, was a river in King County in the U.S. state of Washington. It drained Lake Washington until 1916 when the opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canal lowered the lake, causing the Black River to dry up...
, which formerly ran out of the south end of the lake, dried up completely, and Seward Island became the Seward Peninsula, now the site of Seward Park
Seward Park (Seattle)
Seward Park is a 300 acre park in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., that occupies all of Bailey Peninsula, a forested peninsula off south Seattle that juts into Lake Washington....
.
All of the expansion was happening without zoning, leading to "different land uses and economic classes everywhere [being] mixed."
At the same time as the city was expanding dramatically, the city planners began to put in parks and boulevards under a plan designed by the Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
Firm, providing numerous parks and about twenty miles of boulevard which link most of the parks and greenbelts within the city limits. Much of the ambiance of Seattle today derives from this project.
Where there had so recently been wilderness, increasingly there was the reality of a major city. The Seattle Symphony
Seattle Symphony
The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra's season runs from September through July, and serves as the pit orchestra for most productions of the Seattle Opera in addition to its own concerts...
was founded in 1903, and while few, if any, other comparably important arts institutions were established, the story was different in more popular entertainments. Vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
impresarios Alexander Pantages
Alexander Pantages
Alexander Pantages was an American vaudeville and early motion picture producer and impresario who created a large and powerful circuit of theatres across the western United States and Canada.-Early life:...
, John Considine
John Considine (Seattle)
John Considine was an American impresario, a pioneer of vaudeville.-Youth and arrival on the scene:Born in Chicago, Considine grew up attending Roman Catholic parochial schools, and eventually briefly attended St. Mary's College, Kansas. Briefly a Chicago policeman, he was involved in the raid...
, and John Cort
John Cort (impresario)
John Cort was an American impresario; his Cort Circuit was one of the first national theater circuits. Along with John Considine and Alexander Pantages, Cort was one of the Seattle-based entrepreneurs who parlayed their success in the years following the Klondike Gold Rush into an impact on...
(the last also involved in legitimate theater
Legitimate theater
The term "legitimate theater" dates back to the Licensing Act of 1737, which restricted "serious" theatre performances to the two patent theatres licensed to perform "spoken drama" after the English Restoration in 1662...
) were all based in Seattle in this era.
Seattle trumpeted and celebrated its rise with the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition
Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition
The Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition was a world's fair held in Seattle in 1909, publicizing the development of the Pacific Northwest.It was originally planned for 1907, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush, but the organizers found out about the Jamestown Exposition being held...
of 1909, but the city's rapid growth had led to much questioning of the social order. Not only the labor left, but also progressives
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
calling for "good government" challenged the hegemony of the captains of industry. Rail baron James J. Hill
James J. Hill
James Jerome Hill , was a Canadian-American railroad executive. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest, the northern Great Plains, and Pacific Northwest...
, addressing Seattle business leaders in 1909, noted and regretted the change. "Where," he asked, "are the man who used to match your mountains…?"
World War I and after
In 1910, Seattle voters approved a referendumReferendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
to create a development plan for the whole city. However, the result, known as the Bogue plan, was never to be implemented. The unused plan had at its heart a grand civic center in Belltown
Belltown, Seattle, Washington
Belltown is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, in the 98121 Zip Code, located on the city's downtown waterfront, on land that was artificially flattened as part of a regrading project...
and the Denny Regrade
Denny Regrade, Seattle, Washington
The Denny Regrade is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, USA, that stretches north of the central business district to the grounds of Seattle Center. Its generally flat terrain was originally a steep hill, taken down as part of a mammoth construction project in the first decades of the 20th...
connected to the rest of the city by a rapid transit rail system, with a huge expansion of the park system, crowned by a total conversion of 4000 acres (16.2 km²) Mercer Island
Mercer Island, Washington
Mercer Island is a city in King County, Washington, United States and the name of the island in Lake Washington on which the city sits. The population was 22,699 at the 2010 census....
into parkland. However, the plan was defeated by an alliance of fiscal conservatives who opposed such a grandiose plan on general principles and populists who argued that the plan would mainly benefit the rich.
Growth during this 1910s was almost all in lumber and maritime industries. With the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
a scene of belligerency, World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
increased Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
maritime trade and caused a boom in shipbuilding, there was very little growth in new industries. When the war ended, economic output crashed as the government stopped buying boats, and there were no new industries to pick up the slack. Seattle stopped being the place of explosive growth and opportunity it had been for two consecutive decades.
After the war, Western Washington was a center of radical labor agitation. Most dramatically, in 1919, a dispute over post-war lowering of waterfront wages spread to become the Seattle General Strike. The Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
played a prominent role in the strike. Seattle mayor Ole Hanson
Ole Hanson
Ole Hanson was an American politician who served as mayor of Seattle, Washington from 1918 to 1919. Hanson became a national figure promoting law and order when he took a hardline position during the 1919 Seattle General Strike...
became a prominent figure in the First Red Scare
First Red Scare
In American history, the First Red Scare of 1919–1920 was marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism. Concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and alleged spread in the American labor movement fueled the paranoia that defined the period.The First Red...
, and made an unsuccessful attempt to ride that backlash to the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
in an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for the presidential election of 1920
United States presidential election, 1920
The United States presidential election of 1920 was dominated by the aftermath of World War I and a hostile response to certain policies of Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic president. The wartime economic boom had collapsed. Politicians were arguing over peace treaties and the question of America's...
.
Although no longer the economic powerhouse it had been at the turn of the century, Seattle first began seriously to be an arts center in the 1920s. The Frye and Henry families put on public display the collections that would become the core of the Frye Art Museum
Frye Art Museum
The Frye Art Museum is an art museum located in the First Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, USA . The museum emphasizes painting and sculpture from the nineteenth century to the present. Its holdings originate in the private collection of Charles and Emma Frye...
and Henry Art Gallery
Henry Art Gallery
The Henry Art Gallery is the art museum of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it was founded in 1927 and was the first public art museum in the state of Washington. The...
, respectively. Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n painter Ambrose Patterson arrived in 1919; over the next few decades Mark Tobey
Mark Tobey
Mark George Tobey was an American abstract expressionist painter, born in Centerville, Wisconsin. Widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe, Tobey is the most noted among the "mystical painters of the Northwest." Senior in age and experience, Tobey had a strong influence on the...
, Morris Graves
Morris Graves
Morris Cole Graves was an American expressionist painter. Along with Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, William Cumming, and Mark Tobey, he founded the Northwest School. Graves was also a mystic.-Early years:...
, Kenneth Callahan
Kenneth Callahan
Kenneth Callahan was a noted 20th century Abstract Expressionism painter, art critic curator, and a founder of the Northwest School....
, Guy Irving Anderson, and Paul Horiuchi
Paul Horiuchi
Paul Horiuchi was an acclaimed artist born in Japan who immigrated to the Pacific North West.Horiuchi's worked in both painting and collage.Honors received** 1968 awarded honorary Doctor of Humanities degree by the University of Puget Sound....
would establish themselves as nationally and internationally known artists. Bandleader Vic Meyers
Victor Aloysius Meyers
Victor Aloysius Meyers known as "The Clown Prince of Politics" and "The Pagliacci of Politics", was a Seattle, Washington, jazz bandleader and Washington State Democratic Party politician...
and others kept the speakeasies
Speakeasy
A speakeasy, also called a blind pig or blind tiger, is an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the period known as Prohibition...
jumping through the Prohibition
Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...
era, and by mid-century the thriving jazz scene in the city's Skid Road
Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington
Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Downtown Seattle, Washington, USA. It was once the heart of the city: Seattle's founders settled there in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point on the far side of Elliott Bay. The early structures in the neighborhood...
district would launch the careers of such luminaries as Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...
and Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
.
In 1924, Seattle's Sand Point Airfield was the endpoint of the first aerial circumnavigation
First aerial circumnavigation
The first aerial circumnavigation of the world was conducted in 1924 by a team of aviators of the United States Army Air Service, the precursor of the United States Air Force...
of the world. The historic flight helped convince Congress to develop Sand Point as a Naval Air Station.
The Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
hit Seattle hard. For example, Seattle issued 2,538 permits for housing construction in 1930, but only 361 in 1932. During the Maritime Strike of 1934, Smith Cove
Smith Cove (Washington)
Smith Cove is a body of water, the northern part of Seattle, Washington's Elliott Bay, immediately south of the area that has been known since 1894 as Interbay...
was nearly a battle zone; shippers were scared, to the point where Seattle lost most of its Asian trade to Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
.
WWII and the Boeing Era: 1945 - 1970
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
until 1970, Seattle underwent what amounted to a long, sustained economic boom, although not without occasional reverses. Boeing
Boeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
was hiring, the economy was booming, and while there had been no successful regional planning, the city had not yet grown quite large enough to feel the strain.
The Boeing airplane company grew out of the fortune of William "Bill" Boeing
William Boeing
William Edward Boeing was an American aviation pioneer who founded The Boeing Company.-Biography:Boeing was born to a wealthy German mining engineer named Wilhelm Böing who had made a fortune and who had a sideline as a timber merchant...
's boat company and his fascination with aircraft and flying. During World War I, Boeing grew to employ "about four thousand people, with sales just under ten million dollars a year, it was a good if unspectacular business for Seattle." The company struggled through the period between the wars, and "began to build dressers, counters and furniture for a corset company and a confectioner's shop, as well as flat-bottomed boats called sea sleds
Hickman sea sled
The Hickman Sea Sled is an inverted vee planing hull invented by Albert Hickman. The Sea Sled is a direct forefather of the modern high speed catamaran or tunnel hull....
". However, when World War II started, the government suddenly desired tens of thousands of planes a year, and Boeing was positioned to provide them. Working under fixed-fee contracts, Boeing churned out aircraft and became by far the largest employer in Seattle.
When the war ended, "the military canceled its bomber orders; Boeing factories shut down and 70,000 people lost their jobs," and initially it appeared that Seattle had little to show for the wartime Boeing boom. However, this period of stagnation soon ended with the rise of the jet aircraft
Jet aircraft
A jet aircraft is an aircraft propelled by jet engines. Jet aircraft generally fly much faster than propeller-powered aircraft and at higher altitudes – as high as . At these altitudes, jet engines achieve maximum efficiency over long distances. The engines in propeller-powered aircraft...
and Boeing's reincarnation as the world's leading producer of commercial passenger planes.
At the same time, the freeways were being built to compensate for all this new growth. Most of the "Eastside
Eastside (King County, Washington)
File:Seattle-lakewashington-lakesammamish.PNG|250px|right|The Eastside is to the right of Seattle.# rough city boundariespoly 137 256 148 256 158 194 172 179 172 237 212 266 133 266Renton...
" (east of Lake Washington
Lake Washington
Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It is bordered by the cities of Seattle on the west, Bellevue and Kirkland on the east, Renton on the south and...
) and northern suburbs came into being during the Boeing boom, as did Interstate Highways (I-5
Interstate 5
Interstate 5 is the main Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific Ocean coastline from Canada to Mexico . It serves some of the largest cities on the U.S...
and I-90
Interstate 90
Interstate 90 is the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at . It is the northernmost coast-to-coast interstate, and parallels US 20 for the most part. Its western terminus is in Seattle, at Edgar Martinez Drive S. near Safeco Field and CenturyLink Field, and its eastern terminus is in...
). I-5 neatly cut off Downtown Seattle from Capitol Hill
Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington
Capitol Hill is the most densely populated residential district in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the center of the city's gay and counterculture communities, and is one of the city's most prominent nightlife and entertainment districts....
and First Hill
First Hill, Seattle, Washington
First Hill is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, named for the hill on which it is located. The hill, in turn, is so named for being the first hill one encounters traveling east from downtown Seattle toward Lake Washington....
. Part of the historic downtown, including the tony Sorrento Hotel, was left stranded on the "wrong" side of the freeway. Freeway Park
Freeway Park (Seattle)
Freeway Park in Seattle, Washington, United States, extends from Downtown Seattle, where it adjoins the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, to First Hill. The park bridges over Interstate 5 and a large city-owned parking lot; 8th Avenue bridges over the park...
was eventually built over I-5 in 1976, restoring something of a link between Downtown and First Hill.
With all this postwar growth came growing pollution of the lakes and rivers that provided much of beauty that had been Seattle's appeal to its recent immigrants. Also, the sprawl constantly demanded more roads, since the ones already built had terrible traffic. Jim Ellis
Jim Ellis
Jim Ellis may refer to:*Jim Ellis , American computer scientist *Jim Ellis , American Republican activist*Jim Ellis , American swim coach and subject of the film Pride*Jim Ellis...
and other Seattle natives, anxious to preserve the city in which they grew up, came together to institute the Metropolitan Problems Committee, or METRO, intended to manage and plan the metropolitan area. The original, comprehensive METRO regional plan was defeated in a vote by the suburbanites;
METRO came back, scaled down to a sewage treatment and transport organization; METRO was eventually merged into the King County government.
During this period, Seattle attempted to counter the decline of its downtown and the area immediately to the north by hosting the Century 21 Exposition
Century 21 Exposition
The Century 21 Exposition was a World's Fair held April 21, 1962, to October 21, 1962 in Seattle, Washington.Nearly 10 million people attended the fair...
, the 1962 World's Fair
World's Fair
World's fair, World fair, Universal Exposition, and World Expo are various large public exhibitions held in different parts of the world. The first Expo was held in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom, in 1851, under the title "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All...
. The fair, given a futuristic science theme, was designed to leave behind a civic center, now known as Seattle Center
Seattle Center
Seattle Center is a park and arts and entertainment center in Seattle, Washington. The campus is the site used in 1962 by the Century 21 Exposition. It is located just north of Belltown in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood.-Attractions:...
, including arts buildings, the Pacific Science Center
Pacific Science Center
The Pacific Science Center is a science museum in Seattle, Washington.-Organization:Pacific Science Center is an independent, non-profit science museum based in Seattle, Washington...
and the Space Needle
Space Needle
The Space Needle is a tower in Seattle, Washington and is a major landmark of the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and a symbol of Seattle. Located at the Seattle Center, it was built for the 1962 World's Fair, during which time nearly 20,000 people a day used the elevators, with over...
, and serving also as a fairground.
In conjunction with the fair, a demonstration monorail
Monorail
A monorail is a rail-based transportation system based on a single rail, which acts as its sole support and its guideway. The term is also used variously to describe the beam of the system, or the vehicles traveling on such a beam or track...
line was constructed at no cost to the city and was paid for out of ticket sales, and then turned over to the city for $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
600,000. (See Seattle Center Monorail
Seattle Center Monorail
The Seattle Center Monorail is an elevated monorail line in Seattle, Washington, that runs a little over one mile along Fifth Avenue from Westlake Center in Downtown to Seattle Center in Lower Queen Anne...
.) It is now mostly a tourist attraction. The World's Fair arguably reenergized the downtown of Seattle, and was generally a smashing success, even finishing with a profit.
After the war, the University of Washington also took a step forward, finally fulfilling the promise of its name under university president Charles Odegaard
Charles Odegaard
Charles Edwin Odegaard was the 19th president of the University of Washington from 1958–1973. Odegaard is credited in transforming the University of Washington from an average state university to one among the top public universities in the United States.-Background:Odegaard was born in 1911 in...
.
The Boeing Bust
Due to changing external demand and the cancellation of the SSTSupersonic transport
A supersonic transport is a civilian supersonic aircraft designed to transport passengers at speeds greater than the speed of sound. The only SSTs to see regular service to date have been Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144. The last passenger flight of the Tu-144 was in June 1978 with its last ever...
program, "the Boeing workforce was cut from 80,400 to 37,200 between early 1970 and October 1971". During the resulting economic bust, a famous Seattle billboard sarcastically requested, "Would the last person leaving SEATTLE — turn out the lights?" Nonetheless, only 15% of those laid off eventually left the city.
After 1973, Seattle was in good company for its recession, since the rest of the country was also experiencing the energy crisis. Quite likely, Seattle evaded the fate of Detroit through being a port city with a large number of highly educated skilled workers, though the boom decades of the 1950s and 1960s had come to a decisive end.
Pike Place Market
Pike Place Market is a public market overlooking the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle, Washington, United States. The Market opened August 17, 1907, and is one of the oldest continually operated public farmers' markets in the United States. It is a place of business for many small farmers,...
, arguably Seattle's most important tourist attraction, gained its modern form in the aftermath of the Boeing crash. The internment of the Japanese
Japanese internment
Japanese internment is a term generally used to refer to one or both of the following events:*Japanese American internment, the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II...
from Seattle during World War II had hit the market particularly hard, since 80% of its "wet stall" vendors had been ethnically Japanese. A "Keep the Market" initiative led by architect Victor Steinbrueck
Victor Steinbrueck
Victor Steinbrueck was a Seattle architect, and University of Washington faculty member, and best known for his efforts to preserve the city's Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market.-Biography:...
, passed in 1971, pushing for adaptive reuse
Adaptive reuse
Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an old site or building for a purpose other than which it was built or designed for. Along with brownfield reclamation, adaptive reuse is seen by many as a key factor in land conservation and the reduction of urban sprawl...
. The project was wildly successful in spite of intense opposition by the Seattle Establishment, and today the Pike Place Market pulls nine million visitors each year.
A similar story occurred with Pioneer Square. An old neighborhood, largely built after the Fire of 1889, it had fallen into derelict status after the war. However, with a reenergized downtown, businesses started to look for buildings that could be acquired cheaply. When offices moved into renovated buildings, suddenly there was a market for facilities to service them, leading to a "flood of other restaurants, galleries, boutiques." Seattle was definitely recovering from the blow dealt by the Boeing recession, refilling areas that had threatened to become slums.
Starting in the late 1950s, Seattle was one of the centers of the emergence of the American counter-culture and culture of protest. Before grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
there were beats
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
, fringies (a local Seattle term), hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
s, and batcavers
Goth subculture
The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in England during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify...
.
Emergence of technology
In 1979, Bill GatesBill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
and Paul Allen
Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates...
, founders of Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, Inc., moved their then-small company from Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 545,852 as of the 2010 Census and ranks as the 32nd-largest city in the U.S. As...
, to the suburbs of their native Seattle. By 1985, sales were over $140 million, by 1990, $1.18 billion, and by 1995, Microsoft was the world's most profitable corporation, Allen and Gates were billionaires, and literally thousands of their past and present employees were millionaires.
Microsoft spawned a host of other companies in the Seattle area: millionaire employees often left to found their own companies, and Allen, after his own departure from Microsoft, became a major investor in new companies. Seattle-area companies that owe their origins at least indirectly to Microsoft include RealNetworks
RealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of Internet media delivery software and services based in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The company is the creator of RealAudio, a compressed audio format; RealVideo, a compressed video format; RealPlayer, a media player; RealDownloader, a download...
, AttachmateWRQ, InfoSpace
InfoSpace
Infospace provides metasearch and private-label Internet search services for consumers and businesses.InfoSpace's flagship metasearch site is Dogpile; its other consumer brands are WebCrawler, Nation, DoGreatGood and MetaCrawler.-History:...
, and a host of others. Quite unlike Boeing, Microsoft has served as a catalyst for the creation of a whole realm of industry. Microsoft has also taken a much more active hand than Boeing in public works in the area, donating software to many schools (including the University of Washington).
Seattle has also been experiencing quite good growth in the biotechnology
Biotechnology
Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
and coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
sectors, and Seattle-based Nordstrom
Nordstrom
Nordstrom, Inc. is an upscale department store chain in the United States, founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin. Initially a shoe retailer, the company today also sells clothing, accessories, handbags, jewelry, cosmetics, fragrances, and in some locations, home furnishings...
is now a national brand.
Paul Allen, whose fortune was made through Microsoft though he has long since ceased to be an active participant in the company, has been a major force in Seattle politics, for better or worse. He attempted a voter initiative to build the Seattle Commons, a huge park in South Lake Union and the Cascade District, and even offered to put up his own money to endow a security force for the park, but it was defeated at the polls. (Allen is now the leader of the movement to redevelop this same area as a biotech center.) He did get a football stadium for the Seattle Seahawks
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle, Washington. They are currently members of the Western Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The team joined the NFL in 1976 as an expansion team...
through a successful statewide ballot initiative, and founded the Experience Music Project
Experience Music Project
The EMP Museum is a museum dedicated to the history and exploration of both popular music and science fiction located in Seattle, Washington...
(originally intended as a Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
museum) on the grounds of Seattle Center.
Seattle's bid for the world stage by hosting the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 did not play out as planned. Instead, the city saw became the site of the first great street confrontation between the anti-globalization movement
Anti-globalization movement
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalisation movement, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or...
and the World Trade Organization
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , which commenced in 1948...
on November 30, 1999. While many of those in the streets, and most of those in the suites, were from out of town or even out of country, much of the groundwork of Seattle hosting both the event and the protests against it can be attributed to local forces.
Seattle today is physically and demographically not so different from the Seattle of the 1960s. It is still filled with single family households, still mostly white with as many Asians as blacks, still progressive, still with about half a million people, still almost entirely without a centralized method of planning. The suburbs have grown, but they are also in essentially the same state as before, if a little more independent. Seattle's economy is more vibrant now, and richer, and there is certainly an increase in cultural activity, but the largest employer is still Boeing. The Commons was defeated, just as Jim Ellis was in the 1960s. Pioneer Square still retains some of the ambience of Skid Road. There's still terrible traffic on the freeways, air quality is problematic. The city, or its setting, is still physically beautiful.
Further reading
- HistoryLink.org Encyclopedia of Washington State History provides a collection of articles on Seattle and Washington State history, unparalleled in its niche.
- History of the Smith Tower
- Seattle Museum of History and Industry. With the Seattle Room at the Seattle Public LibrarySeattle Public LibraryThe Seattle Public Library is the public library system serving Seattle, Washington, USA. It was officially established by the city in 1890, though there had been efforts to start a Seattle library as early as 1868. There are 26 branches in the system, most of them named after the neighborhoods in...
, hosts the most extensive archives about Seattle. Both have references to other archives. - Washington State History Museum, Washington State Historical Society
- Sir John Colborne Seaton, Seattle, Encyclopædia Britannica 11th Edition (1911), now in the public domain.
- Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History. An extensive project directed by University of WashingtonUniversity of WashingtonUniversity of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
professor James Gregory - University of Washington Libraries: Digital Collections:
- Vintage Seattle: Blog featuring collections of high resolution images from Seattle's past.