The Great Seattle Fire destroys much of the city's commercial core and waterfront on June 6, 1889.

  • By HistoryLink Staff
  • Posted 1/25/2003
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 5115
See Additional Media

At about 2:30 p.m. on June 6, 1889, a pot of glue bursts into flames in Victor Clairmont's basement cabinet shop at the corner of Front (1st Avenue) and Madison streets in Seattle. Efforts to contain the fire fail and it soon engulfs the wood-frame building. Thanks to a dry spring and a brisk wind, the flames spread quickly, and volunteer firefighters tap out the town's inadequate, privately-owned watermains. By sunset, some 64 acres lie in smoldering ruins. This event is known as the Great Seattle Fire

Devastation, but no Fatalities

As Northwest historian Paul Dorpat would write years later, "It takes a conspiracy of coincidences to turn an ordinary fire into a great one. Mid-afternoon, June 6, 1889, Seattle was ready with a heat wave, a fanning wind from the north, its fire chief out of town, next to no water pressure, a business district constructed of clapboard, and an upset pot of glue." ("Now & Then ..."). After igniting in Clairmont's shop, the blaze spread in all directions, racing unseen through basements and under planked streets and sidewalks before breaking into the open. Within a few hours, much of Seattle's commercial core and waterfront was destroyed. 

Many histories of Seattle erroneously ascribed the fire's start to James McGough's paint shop on the floor above Clairmont's workshop at Front and Madison, based on initial newspaper reports. McGough protested his innocence, and on June 21, 1889, the Post-Intelligencer published a correction and detailed interview with John Back, who worked in Clairmont's shop and admitted to sparking the blaze by throwing cold water on the overheated glue pot. Despite this, the error was repeated by historians and journalists for nearly a century, until historian James Warren noticed the correction and, in his 1989 monograph The Day Seattle Burned, shifted the point of origin to Clairmont's shop.

After the fire, insurance investigators charged the city with having both an inadequate water supply and an inadequate fire department. Firefighters were described as being poorly trained, and most of them, including their chief, quit in disgust at the charges. In response, the city authorized the creation of a paid, professional fire department, which was passed by ordinance on October 17, 1889. Three days later, 32 men were hired.

Many Seattleites lost businesses. Among them were African American businesses, including an employment agency, a hotel, a restaurant, two barbershops, a boot and shoe making shop, and a real estate firm. Mayor Robert Moran rallied Seattle's citizens to rebuild -- with brick and stone this time. The result survives today as Pioneer Square.

The Great Seattle Fire, Part 1

The Great Seattle Fire, Part 2

 


Sources:

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 21, 1889; James R. Warren, The Day Seattle Burned (Seattle: J.R. Warren, 1989); King County and Its Emerald City: Seattle (Seattle: American Historical Press, 1997); Esther Hall Mumford, Seattle's Black Victorians 1851-1901 (Seattle: Ananse Press, 1980, 33; Hugh McGough, "The Great Seattle Fire: Don't Blame Jimmie McGough," (www.magoo.com/hugh/fire.html).


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You