The Seattle Underground is a network of underground passages and basements in downtown Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington, USA, which was on the ground when the city was built in the mid-19th century. Once the streets are elevated, these spaces become unused, but have become a tourist attraction in recent decades.
Video Seattle Underground
Histori
Seattle's first building is made of wood. On June 6, 1889, at 2:39 pm, a cabinet maker (Jonathan Edward Back), accidentally overturned and lit a glue pot. An attempt to extinguish it with water spreads the fat burning glue. The fireman is out of town, and although firefighters respond, they make the mistake of trying to use too many hoses at once. With the subsequent water pressure drop, no effective hose, and the Great Seattle Fire destroy 31 blocks.
While destructive fires were unusual for the moment, instead of rebuilding the city as before, city leaders made two strategic decisions: first, that all new buildings must be made of stone or bricks, as a guarantee against a similar disaster in the future. ; and secondly, that roads should be rejected one to two stories higher than the original class path. Pioneer Square was originally built mostly on tautand filled and, as a consequence, often flooded. The new street level also helps ensure that Gravity-assisted flush-assisted toilets that are channeled to Elliott Bay are not returned at high tide.
For regrade, the streets are lined with concrete walls that form narrow alleys between walls and buildings on both sides of the road, with the wide "alley" in which the road is located. A steep natural slope dock is used, and through a series of gutter materials washed into wide "alleys", raising the road to the desired new level, generally 12 feet (3.7 m) taller than before, in some places nearly 30 feet (9.1 m).
In the beginning, pedestrians climbed the stairs to go between the street and the sidewalk in front of the entrance of the building. The brick arches are built next to the road surface, over the submerged sidewalk. The pavement lights (a kind of streetlight with small panes of clear glass that later became amethyst) are mounted above the gap of elevated roads and buildings, creating an area now called the Seattle Underground.
When they rebuild the buildings, traders and landlords they know that the ground floor is basically going to be underground and the next floor will be the new ground floor, so there is only a little decoration on the original ground floor doors and windows, but the vast decor. on the new ground floor.
Once the sidewalks are finished, the building owners move their business to the new ground floor, although traders do business on the lowest floor of the building that survived the fire, and pedestrians continue to use underground pavements illuminated by pavement lamps (still seen on some roads) embedded in sidewalks grade-level above.
In 1907, the city condemned the Underground for fear of bubonic plague, two years before the 1909 World Fair in Seattle (Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition). The basement is left damaged or used as a storage place. Some of these became illegal shop houses for homeless places, gambling, speakeasie, and opium nests.
Only a small subset of Seattle Underground has been restored and made safe and accessible to the public with guided tours. In 1965, local resident Bill Speidel founded the "Bill Speidel Underground Tour," which operates to this day.
Maps Seattle Underground
Popular culture
The Seattle Underground featured prominently in the 1973 television movie The Night Strangler (starring Darren McGavin). The film is a sequel to the hugely successful 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker and brought a spike in tourism to Underground afterwards. Apparently, the movie is actually not an underground movie (because the available area is very small). Filming is done at the Bradbury Building and on the Universal Studio sound stage with special arrangements.
The 25th novel Terry Pratchett in the Discworld series, The Truth, mentions that the fictitious capital Ankh Morpork is built on the bottom foundation made by Ankh Morpork, and that after significant floods in the Ankh River, the streets are gradually raised one level, by road, and people use stairs and bridges to cross the road. In the appendix, Pratchett refers to the peculiarities of reality, as found in Seattle, Washington.
See also
- Catacombs of Rome
- Edinburgh Vault
- Manchester Cathedral Steps
- Chicago Cultivation
- Shanghai tunnel (less known as Portland Underground, in Portland, Oregon)
- Underground Atlanta
- Underground (underground feature in cities around the world)
References
Further reading
- Doc Maynard, The Person Who Created Seattle . 1978, USA: Nettle Creek. ISBN: 0-914890-02-6.
- Children of Advantages . 1990, USA: Nettle Creek. ISBN: 0-914890-06-9.
External links
- Mashable: 1905-1930 The Seattle Regrade
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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