Post by Barnaby Cuthbert on Aug 25, 2014 20:25:42 GMT -8
The Year was 1907 - Boom time for Seattle - A New Age of wonders for the world. Moving pictures were all the rage. Electric lights were stealing away the shadows. For Kindred, it was a time both wondrous and terrifying to behold.
The discovery of gold along and near the Klondike River in Canada's Yukon Territory and in Alaska made Seattle an instant boom town. The city exploited its nearness to the Klondike and its already established shipping lines to become the premier outfitting point for prospectors. The link became so strong that Alaska was long considered to be the personal property of Seattle and Seattleites. There was gold in the Yukon, and one poor prospectors returned from the frosty north rich men, with rich appetites. It was often said afterward, that the "Miners mined the gold, and Seattle mined the miners."
During the early 1900s, Seattle, now having discovered the rewards of advertising, continued to experience strong growth. Two more transcontinental railroads, the Union Pacific and Milwaukee Road systems, reached Seattle and reinforced the city's position as a trade and shipping center, particularly with Asia and the North Pacific.
The city's population became increasingly diversified. Scandinavians came to work in fishing and lumbering, African Americans to work as railroad porters and waiters, and Japanese to operate truck gardens and hotels. There were significant communities of Italians, Chinese, Jews, and Filipinos. The International District, home to several Asian ethnic groups, was largely developed during this period.
A number of venerable newspapers opened their doors in Seattle, the Telegraph, the Argus and the Seattle Star, all vying for readership. They would soon be dwarfed in popularity by the nascent Seattle Herald, backed by powerful interests and plenty of money.
Some important buildings were constructed from 1889 to 1907, not the least of which was the Seattle Public Library and the Pioneer Building. The Seattle Theatre opened, the Seattle Country Club arrived on the scene and Seattle’s first Athletic Club was organized. The Great Northern Railway began operating in Seattle in earnest, lead by a brilliant mortal named John Frank Stevens, who would soon become famous for a stunning feat of railway engineering through the Cascades forever after called Steven’s Pass.
The iconic Tlingit totem pole was installed in Pioneer Place, having been summarily stolen in the night by some enterprising city founders who felt that a little more native flavor was what was needed in the city square. To spite the members of the Seattle city council at the time, the Tlingit sent an envoy to request it back, and when the council refused, they burned it in the square. So the city council stole another one. The Tlingit saw no reason to travel again to make their point, which was clearly lost on the men of the Seattle government.
At the turn of the century a number of other improvements came to Seattle, swelling it’s population to over 80,000 mortals. These mortals were less superstitious than ever before, owing to the industrial revolution's promises of better living through scientific endeavor. This was a time of both confidence and ferment. In the cities and the states, political "Progressives" were coming to power, experimenting with reforms such as women's suffrage, direct election of United States senators, the initiative, recall, the Australian ballot, primary elections, and laws setting minimum wages, work standards, and regulated rates for common carriers and services. Followers of the Progressive movement believed in the perfectibility of man and his society. It was, said historian Samuel Eliot Morison, "an attempt through government action to curb the arrogance of organized wealth and the wretchedness of poverty amid plenty." Although McKinley certainly was no Progressive, the movement was on the rise; two of the three presidents who followed him were Progressives: Republican Theodore Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
Seattle hired the Olmsted brothers to design it’s public parks, which resulted in dozens of protected green spaces throughout the city, the Seattle Fine Arts society and Mountaineering club was founded, and a number of areas near the old city limits were annexed. Atlantic City, Ballard, Columbia, Dunlap, Rainier Beach, Ravenna, South-East Seattle, South Park, and West Seattle all became part of the city limits.
Perhaps the most impressive change to Seattle came in the form of a massive construction project, known as the Denny Regrade. The Denny Regrade became an entire new neighborhood in Seattle, that stretched north of the central business district all the way to what would one day be the grounds of Seattle Center. Its generally flat terrain was originally a steep hill, taken down as part of the mammoth construction project soon after the Great Fire. The northeastern portion of the Denny Regrade is now sometimes known as the Denny Triangle, a term that has gained currency as this neighborhood has seen increasing development in the first decades of the 21st Century. There a massive section of the city was literally buried 30 feet below the new street level, with all of it’s storefronts, walkways, alleyways, plumbing and signage in tact. That underground network was then, for the most part, summarily forgotten, though occasionally used as storage or to move contraband about the city.
The St. James Cathedral was opened, replacing the old Trinity church that had been rebuilt and then oddly burned down again shortly after the Great Fire, and as the old Trinity bell was gifted to the new church, it rang over the square eerily at the edge of history. The sound of the bell had such an effect upon the populace that the neighborhood at the edge of the cathedral’s bells was given a new name, as if stained by the very sound: Belltown.
Now the iconic Pike Place Market, built over the old city that had once burned to ashes, it’s foundations set deep into the underground, makes ready to be born. It is into these Nights the Kindred of Seattle awaken once more.
