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Greetings from lovely, if hot and dry, Yakima Washington! Eventually, this blog will talk of the Boeing Aviation Museum, the EMP Museum / Sci-Fi Museum, and the Seattle Duck Tour, Seattle microbreweries and food, as well as Yakima's wine country. But now, I will talk of a bad decision shared by Chicago and Seattle.
When the white man came to America, he had a bad tendency to build cities on swamps. Chicago means "swamp" in the local Indian language, and the original name for Seattle, Nequa, also means swamp. (Seattle was the chief of the local Indians. Since the white guy was stealing the chief's land they tossed him a bone and named the town after him.)
In both cases, the eventual solution to the (lack of) drainage and (lack of) sewage removal involved physically raising the city. In Chicago's case, the Great Fire happened soon enough in our history (before the arrival of flush toilets) that some of the more odoriferous solutions tried elsewhere weren't needed.
Seattle did not have such luck. The city was built on a tidal flat, and at low tide some first floors, let alone basements, flooded. The interim solution was a wooden-piped sewer running six feet above street level. This system was noteworthy for not really working at all, so when the whole wooden city burnt to the ground, as wooden cities did, scrapping it was a blessing.
In any event, both Chicago and Seattle had to raise the street level to provide for drainage. In Chicago's case, when your local street was to be raised, somebody came along and jacked up your building to the new street level. For whatever reason, this was not done in Seattle. Rather, individual construction firms were told to build two story buildings with an entrance on both levels. Then, the city came along built retaining walls in the streets, and filled in the streets to the new level.
But then Seattle ran out of money, leaving a series of gaps and long narrow trenches between the street and the building doors. The fix was putting wooden ladders at the street corners. This was done for almost a decade until the citizenry got tired of falling in trenches and roofed said trenches over - creating both a sidewalk and underground covered passageways which were used for a decade or so.
It is, in any case, a fascinating bit of history - and you can see it for yourself. You can also learn that a city of 40,000 had 2,000 prostitutes, each paying $10 / month tax, yielding 80+% of city revenues.
When the white man came to America, he had a bad tendency to build cities on swamps. Chicago means "swamp" in the local Indian language, and the original name for Seattle, Nequa, also means swamp. (Seattle was the chief of the local Indians. Since the white guy was stealing the chief's land they tossed him a bone and named the town after him.)
In both cases, the eventual solution to the (lack of) drainage and (lack of) sewage removal involved physically raising the city. In Chicago's case, the Great Fire happened soon enough in our history (before the arrival of flush toilets) that some of the more odoriferous solutions tried elsewhere weren't needed.
Seattle did not have such luck. The city was built on a tidal flat, and at low tide some first floors, let alone basements, flooded. The interim solution was a wooden-piped sewer running six feet above street level. This system was noteworthy for not really working at all, so when the whole wooden city burnt to the ground, as wooden cities did, scrapping it was a blessing.
In any event, both Chicago and Seattle had to raise the street level to provide for drainage. In Chicago's case, when your local street was to be raised, somebody came along and jacked up your building to the new street level. For whatever reason, this was not done in Seattle. Rather, individual construction firms were told to build two story buildings with an entrance on both levels. Then, the city came along built retaining walls in the streets, and filled in the streets to the new level.
But then Seattle ran out of money, leaving a series of gaps and long narrow trenches between the street and the building doors. The fix was putting wooden ladders at the street corners. This was done for almost a decade until the citizenry got tired of falling in trenches and roofed said trenches over - creating both a sidewalk and underground covered passageways which were used for a decade or so.
It is, in any case, a fascinating bit of history - and you can see it for yourself. You can also learn that a city of 40,000 had 2,000 prostitutes, each paying $10 / month tax, yielding 80+% of city revenues.
