By Donna McEwen
Beneath the amethyst-colored skylights on the street level sidewalks, there is an underground city in Seattle, Washington. This hidden city is worth discovering!
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Purple shards of glass (deck prisms or bullseyes) provide underground lighting for tunnels beneath the streets of Seattle, using the same principle as in boats before electricity. Originally colorless, the addition of manganese dioxide exposed to UV rays often turns the glass purple
This underground city is mostly closed off nowadays; however, at one time, the underground streets and buildings were the heart of the vibrant city of Seattle, a hub to ship abundant lumber down the coast to California. The location was perfect for a port, but unfortunately the spot was not the best for a city. It was barely above sea level and regularly experienced rampant flooding, especially around Pioneer Square. To avoid flooding, many buildings were propped up on wooden stilts. Much of the city (from sidewalks to buildings, to bridges, to even sewage and water pipes) was made of wood, a handy and cheap source of building material.
The town was essentially made of kindling, waiting for a fire disaster. The Great Fire of Seattle, which raged all night, happened in 1889 wiping out 25 city blocks, four wharves and all the city’s railroad terminals, a huge loss of property, estimated to be $20 million ($560 million today). Luckily, the loss of human life was small, one young boy named James. On a brighter side, the rodent population of over a million rats was decimated.
Great fire of Seattle
After the Great Fire of 1889, the city fathers decided to resolve several planning problems at the same time. New constructions had to be of brick, stone and masonry to fireproof buildings. Wood was no longer allowed as the main building material. To protect the area from flooding and to build barriers above sea level with earth from the surrounding hills, the city hatched an ambitious plan. The Denny Hills surrounding Seattle were targeted to be regraded or leveled and used as landfill closer to shore. Streets were lined with huge concrete walls to act as buffer walls to hold out the sea. Gravel and stone from the steep hills were used, and giant sluices allowed the gravel to be washed down between the concrete walls, raising the streets to the desired new heights, between 12 feet and 30 feet in some areas, a floor or even two floors above the original street level.
During the reconstruction period, one had to be rather athletic to circulate in the streets of Seattle. For a few years, streets and walkways were at the “new” raised level, but shop entrances were 12 feet down or more at the old street level. Ladders were strategically placed to allow pedestrians to go up and down between the new streets and the old shops. Shop owners knew that eventually the second floor of their buildings would end up becoming the ground floor entrances, so owners only applied architectural ornamentation to the second floor, leaving the original shop fronts quite plain. It looked as if the storefronts were hung 12 feet in the air. Once the reconstruction was completed, owners started using the second-floor entrances, leaving the original first floor storefronts of their buildings underground. The city then built concrete bridges over the walkways and retaining walls, completely hiding the original street level, and paving the new streets as if there was nothing below, thus creating Seattle’s underground city.
Original street fronts, including this shoe store, now under street level
Eight years after the great fire, in 1897, the Yukon Gold Rush brought 100,000 adventurers through Seattle en route for Alaska. Merchants quickly exploited Seattle’s port status, advertising the city as “The Gateway to the Gold Fields.” Prospectors could buy the required ton of supplies in the city (tents, clothing, tools, food), everything they needed for $1000.
The financial boom brought all sorts of entrepreneurs, as well as barmen, gamblers, con men and madams to Pioneer Square. When the gold rush was over, 10 years later, many of these unsavory types stayed, and gave Pioneer Square a bad name. Some of the abandoned areas became illegal flophouses for the homeless, gambling joints, speakeasies and opium dens, the seedy underbelly of Seattle.
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(left) Vaulted ceiling shows the underside of street-level bridge built over former streets
(right) Prospectors had to bring in a ton of supplies to be allowed to travel to the Klondike
Gradually even these areas faded from memory as the underground spaces were used less and less. As reputable businesses moved uptown, Pioneer Square languished, almost forgotten.
People continued to use the underground areas on occasion, but the covered walkways were condemned in 1907 out of fear they were helping to spread the bubonic plague due to the rat population. So, the underground was left to rot.
In the 1960s a local eccentric named Bill Speidel saw potential in the strange spectacle of the underground’s buried streets and buildings. He created “Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour” which ignited interest in this quirky piece of Seattle history.
Around the same time, the area around Pioneer Square (the neighborhood that houses the underground) was under threat of development. Speidel promoted the Underground, leading a campaign to preserve his much-loved streets and buildings. He helped to get half a million signatures on a petition to save Pioneer Square. In 1970, after being presented with a petition of so many names, the Seattle City Council adopted an ordonnance naming 20 square blocks around Pioneer Square as an historic area, eventually leading to the neighborhood being placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city contributed funds to upgrade public spaces, and the area benefited from the federal government tax-credit program for historic buildings. Adventurous tenants such artists, architects, gallery owners, along with the Underground Tours, helped to revitalize the area. Now Pioneer Square is a vibrant artistic neighborhood filled with creative shops, gallery venues, and even a pastry/ baking school for marginalized individuals.
Speidel’s tours are still in operation, although Bill Speidel passed away in 1988. In 2013, a second tour company, Beneath the Streets, was created. They also offer specialized experiences, including a Queer History Tour, highlighting the LGBTQ+ community’s impact on the city’s development, and a Red-Light District Tour, which delves into the district’s lively and complex past.
Ambling around vibrant Pioneer Square, most people would never imagine that a few yards below their feet are the original streets of Seattle, and that, in fact, they are walking over bridges, still lit by the amethyst-colored deck prism glass from over a hundred years ago.
With a nod to the famous Chihuly Gardens, this shop on Pioneer Square features glass creations from many glass blowers. The staircase leads down to an underground world.
