Hometown tourist

When was the last time you played tourist in your home town? We love a lot of the typical touristy sights in Seattle, so I guess you could say that we do play tourist. But we don't stray from those favorite places often. So today, when Natalie and Anton asked us to come do the Seattle Underground Tour with them, we said "Sure!"

We've spent plenty of time in Pioneer Square, but have never done the Underground Tour. Isn't that silly? It's one of the must-do things in Seattle, and I've always been curious, but we never took the time. I'm so glad we did.

OK, a tiny bit of history is in order here. Seattle burned to the ground back in 1879, thanks to a careless worker who left a pot of glue heating on a stove. It boiled over and set wood shavings on fire, then the wood building, then the next wood building, then the next. And so on, until the entire business district turned to ash.

So here was Seattle, at a crossroads as it were. The business owners wanted to rebuild and start making money again, and the city wanted to do a little earth-moving to make a bigger area to rebuild the city on, and also a higher one, to keep Elliott Bay from flooding the city twice a day at high tide. This involved actually washing down a few steep hills into the low-lying area of the city, using hydraulic water hoses. It was ingenious and destructive; read "Skid Road" by Murray Morgan for all the humorous (and not so humorous) details.

Both projects got underway at the same time, and eventually they ran into a snag:  the new brick and stone buildings were in the way of the dirt being sluiced down the hills. So the city made a proclamation (or maybe an ordinance): the new buildings could stand, but they had to have entryways on both the first and second floors. While the owners worked on that, the city built walls around every city block, four feet wide at the bottom, two feet at the top. And they filled in the streets up to the top of the walls. And business went on as usual.

Below the street level, there were shops and banks and other businesses, accessed by sidewalks that ran around the building. It can't have been pleasant for the shoppers, as the only way to get to them was to climb up or down ladders. Just imagine climbing a ladder in a corset and long skirt!

Down under the sidewalks, there are still doorways, brick walls, windows and doors, carved wooden columns, even a toilet and sink, set high above the original floor (another problem with the early sewer system was the unfortunate effect of the tide: when the tide came in, it backflushed the lines, and toilets were known to turn into geysers. Putting the toilets on pedestals, like this one, didn't work).

Eventually, after numerous accidents involving things falling off wagons and crashing down on the people below, the city covered the open sidewalks with cool barrel-vaulted brick ceilings, many with skylights made from glass blocks, to let some light into the underground areas. Look down as you walk the streets of the lower part of the city, and you'll see grids of amethyst glass blocks in the sidewalks.

The tour was fun and interesting, and our guide was a kick. She told us that 38 city blocks had walls built around them, and there is much more to the Underground than most people will ever see. Some have modern shops and businesses, most are abandoned and derelict. Our tour took us to the Underground area around three buildings in Pioneer Square, ending up below the Pioneer Building, where we started.

It was a fun day in the city. We walked down to the waterfront, up the steps to the Pike Place Market, and tried to get into the Owl & Thistle for their famous fish and chips, but all the bars in town were full of soccer fans, watching Team USA making their bid for a spot for the World Cup.

Instead, we ate gyros at a Mediterranean restaurant near Occidental Park, and after lunch we did another thing on my list of Seattle tourist stops: the Yukon Gold Rush National Historic Park, at the southern edge of the Pioneer Square district.