141 results for: Great Seattle Fire (1889)
Photograph
Seattle Fire Department employees, wagons, and engine houses, 1898
The creation of the Seattle Fire Department (SFD) can be traced back to July 6th, 1876, when the all-volunteer Seattle Engine Company No.1 was organized. In 1883, the City Charter was amended to create and fund equipment, but not staff, for a centralized municipal fire department. The volunteer-based system persisted until pressure from the insurance industry and citizens after the…
ID Number:1953.287.1
Date:1898
Photograph
Moses R. Maddocks posing in studio, Seattle, circa 1875
Early Seattle settler Moses R. Maddocks (1833-1919) was born in Maine and worked in logging camps across the country before moving to Port Gamble in 1858. He was elected to the Territorial Legislature in 1863, after which he came to Seattle, was a partner in building the Occidental Hotel, then partnered with Gordon Kellogg in one of Seattle's first drug…
ID Number:1957.1279.6
Date:Circa 1875
Photograph
Susan Maddocks posing in a studio, Seattle, circa 1875
Early Seattle settler Susan Williamson (1835-1917) was born in New York and had moved west with her brother, a sawmiller. In 1956 she married Moses Rideout Maddocks (1833-1919), a fellow settler from the east coast who was involved in business and politics. For many years the Maddocks' lived above their drug store but after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889…
ID Number:1957.1279.7
Date:Circa 1875
Cartographic material
Birds Eye View of Seattle, 1889
Seattle in the 1880s was a rapidly growing city, aided in no small part by the 1883 connection with the Northern Pacific Railway Company. Lumber and coal were the primary industries, but the growth of fishing, wholesale trade, shipbuilding, and shipping also contributed to the town's economic expansion and population growth. The Seattle City Census of 1888 records population at…
ID Number:1957.1280.7
Date:1889
Cartographic material
Bird's-eye view of Seattle, 1879
Eli Sheldon Glover (1845-1909) was an inventor and artist who was active in San Francisco, Chicago and Tacoma. Many of his works are perspective maps, and he traveled throughout the west drawing "birds-eye" views of newly developed cities. This image of Seattle was drawn by Mr. Glover in 1879, and is the second-earliest overview map of the city known to…
ID Number:1957.1281.10
Date:1879
Correspondence
Letter from Henry McClure after Great Seattle Fire, June 7, 1889
Henry Franklin McClure (1860-1931), a graduate of the University of Oregon, came to Seattle in 1888 to practice law. In 1897 McClure and his brother Walter Andrew McClure (1868-1954) formed the law firm McClure and McClure. They were later joined by another brother, William Ernest McClure (b. 1874) and the firm developed into one of Seattle's largest law offices. The…
ID Number:1961.2226.1
Date:1889
Photograph
Orion Denny and John Pritchard outside Denny Clay Mine, Taylor, circa 1895
The Denny-Renton Clay and Coal Company was founded in 1892 by Arthur A. Denny (1822-1899) when he bought out predecessor company Puget Sound Fire Clay Company. Clay's popularity over wood as a building material grew substantially after the Great Seattle Fire in 1889. Raw material was extracted with hydraulic mining equipment from heavy glacial clay deposits in Taylor, Washington (near…
ID Number:1962.2540.5
Date:Circa 1895
Photograph
Queen City Hose Team members posing for tournament, 1889
The creation of the Seattle Fire Department (SFD) can be traced back to July 6th, 1876, when the all-volunteer Seattle Engine Company No.1 was organized. In 1883, the City Charter was amended to create and fund equipment, but not staff, for a centralized municipal fire department. The volunteer-based system persisted until pressure from the insurance industry and citizens after the…
ID Number:1965.3520.9
Date:1889
Photograph
Volunteer firemen Victor Denny and Luther Youngs, Seattle, circa 1885
In the mid-1880s, Victor Denny (left) and Luther Youngs (right) were members of Seattle’s all-volunteer fire department. Denny was born in Seattle to one of the city's founding fathers, David Denny, was a student at the time of this photograph. Youngs, a carpenter, had moved to Seattle in 1883 from Kentucky. In June 1889, in spite of the best efforts…
ID Number:1969.4689.1
Date:Circa 1885
Photograph
Employees posing outside Lowman & Hanford Co. building on First and Cherry, Seattle, 1882
James D. Lowman (1856-1947) and Clarence Hanford (1857-1920) were business and civic leaders in early Seattle, each with ties to Seattle's founders. In 1882, they joined forces to found Lowman & Hanford Stationery and Printing Company. The firm advertised as booksellers, stationers, printers and binders but also sold typewriters, sewing machines, pianos and organs. After losing their original building in…
ID Number:1970.5046.3
Date:1882