Seattle, WA 1889

The Seattle fire started with a glue pot, and most of the business district along the water burned to the ground. So to rebuild they decided____to rebuild the town higher (8-32 ft higher.) This would fix the flooding problem, and the problem they were having every time the tide came in, flushing up the septic system.Soo, since they had a huge hill behind them, they rebuilt block by block, by building a wall around the road and raising the road up- at least a story. So for years, folks walked on what was left of sidewalks 8-10 feet below the road. There were ladders at the corners.When they rebuilt the building, they did it with 2 front doors, one on each floor. Then they built sdewalks over the original sidewalks withskylights in them to light the underground sidewalks!! When the job was done, they had moved more dirt from the hill behind town to the raised town than was moved to build the Panama canal.