Seattle’s underground history of bad plumbing and prostitutes: Going to Seattle? A predisposition for flooding prompted city officials and engineers to raise the street level in the 1890s. The work left behind subterranean passages that once were main roadways and first-floor storefronts of old downtown.
Photo: Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour is a leisurely, guided walking tour beneath Seattle’s sidewalks and streets. Credit: Rajaram Sethursman
Seattle’s Underground Tour is both fascinating and educational. It’s also kind of hilarious and a little bit mind-blowing to learn that Seattle got off to such a rough start and finally managed to become the city it is today despite a decades-long comedy of errors that included a wooden pipe sewage system connected to toilets that became spewing geysers at high tide, streets made of sawdust that turned into horse-swallowing bogs when it rained (which it did all the time), settlements built on tidal flats that flooded, and years - YEARS! - during which pedestrians had to climb up and down ladders at intersections just to cross the street. Ridiculous!
(Source: Los Angeles Times, via neighborhoodr-seattle)
