Beneath Seattle’s streets, an entire city has been sitting in the dark for 100 years

Pioneer Square’s Underground Runs Deep

Beneath the sidewalks of Seattle’s oldest neighborhood, a whole city sits in the dark.

Old storefronts, passageways and sidewalks that once saw daylight now sit one to two stories below the streets you walk on.

Guided tours take you through these dimly lit corridors for a look at the layer Seattle paved over more than a century ago.

Pioneer Square dates back to the 1850s, and it holds one of the strangest stories in American city history. The part underground is just where it starts.

An overheated glue pot burned 25 blocks flat

On June 6, 1889, a glue pot overheated inside a cabinet shop on Front Street and started the worst fire Seattle had ever seen.

Wooden buildings and wood-planked streets fed the blaze as it tore through the district, pushed along by dry conditions and strong winds.

The volunteer fire department fought back with low water pressure running through small pipes, some of them hollowed-out logs.

By the time the flames died, about 25 blocks of the business district and waterfront were gone. Not a single life was lost.

The city raised its streets two stories higher

City leaders took the disaster as a chance to fix a problem that had plagued Seattle for years. The original streets sat so low that sewers backed up every time the tide came in.

So they raised the street level one to two stories across the district, about 12 feet in most places and nearly 30 feet in others.

Workers built retaining walls, blasted hillside material between them with water cannons and paved over the top. New building codes required brick or stone.

Merchants rebuilt fast at the old level, knowing their ground floors would become basements.

Ladders connected the old streets to the new ones

For a while, the old sidewalks sat far below the new raised roads, and people climbed ladders to get between the two levels.

Workers built brick archways along the road surface above the old walkways, and small glass prisms went into the new sidewalks overhead to let sunlight reach the spaces below.

Eventually, new sidewalks bridged the gap and building owners moved their shops up to the new ground floor. The original street-level spaces got sealed off.

The buried city disappeared from memory for decades.

500 people showed up with dollar bills in hand

In the 1960s, Seattle journalist Bill Speidel started pushing to save Pioneer Square from the wrecking ball. In May 1965, the Junior Chamber of Commerce invited him to lead underground tours for a single day.

He showed up to find Pioneer Place Park packed with people holding dollar bills. Five hundred visitors walked through on that first day, each paying a dollar.

Speidel turned the tours into a regular operation, and the attention helped spark a preservation movement that saved the neighborhood.

The city designated Pioneer Square a Historic District in May 1970, protecting 20 square blocks.

Walk through 1890s storefronts below the streets

The tours run about 60 to 75 minutes and take you through underground corridors, old storefronts and passageways beneath Pioneer Square.

You walk through spaces that were ground-level shops, lobbies and sidewalks in the 1890s.

Guides point out original building details, old bank teller cages, faded signs and the retaining walls that hold it all together.

One highlight is looking up through the purple glass prisms embedded in the sidewalks overhead.

Two companies run tours: Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour, the original since 1965, and Beneath the Streets, which opened in 2013.

Clear glass turned purple after a century of sunlight

Thousands of small glass prisms sit in the sidewalks throughout Pioneer Square.

Workers installed them in the 1890s as skylights to bring natural light into the underground spaces below. The glass started out clear, but manganese in it reacted to sunlight over the years and turned it purple.

You can spot the purple squares all around the neighborhood, especially near Smith Tower.

From below on the tour, you see light still filtering through these same prisms, more than a century after they went in.

Ride a hand-operated elevator to the 35th floor

Smith Tower opened in 1914 as the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

It stands 42 stories tall in the heart of Pioneer Square and still uses its original hand-operated Otis elevators.

An elevator operator rides with you to the 35th-floor observatory, where 360-degree views open up across the city.

From the open-air deck, you can see the Space Needle, Elliott Bay, Mount Rainier and the downtown skyline.

The 35th floor also holds the Chinese Room, furnished with carved teak and blackwood pieces that have been there since the building opened.

A cable car shelter and a 1790 totem pole

At the corner of First Avenue and Yesler Way stands the Iron Pergola, built in 1909 as a cable car waiting shelter.

Cast iron columns hold up a glass roof on what was the most elaborate structure of its kind west of the Mississippi. It earned National Historic Landmark status in 1977.

Next to it stands a Tlingit totem pole, a replica carved by Tlingit craftsmen in 1940 and dedicated with tribal blessings. The original pole dated to around 1790 and honored a Tlingit leader known as Chief-of-All-Women.

A free national park sits inside a hotel from 1890

The Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park takes up space inside the historic 1890 Cadillac Hotel building in Pioneer Square, and it costs you nothing to walk in.

The National Park Service museum tells the story of the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush and how Seattle became the main supply stop for miners heading north.

About 100,000 people passed through the city on their way to the Yukon gold fields.

Interactive exhibits, rotating displays and films play every half hour. The center is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

A 22-foot waterfall marks where UPS got its start

Waterfall Garden Park is a pocket park on the site where United Parcel Service was founded in 1907.

A 22-foot man-made waterfall pumps 5,000 gallons of water per minute over granite boulders right in the middle of the neighborhood. The Annie E. Casey Foundation created the park in 1978 to honor UPS founder James Casey.

A few blocks away, Occidental Park spreads shade under London Plane trees and has bocce courts, ping pong tables and a playground.

Totem poles and cedar carvings by Northwest Coast artist Duane Pasco stand throughout the park.

Cobblestone streets and the city’s oldest art walk

Pioneer Square holds one of the best collections of late 1800s Romanesque Revival brick and stone buildings in the country, and you can see them all on foot.

Every first Thursday of the month, dozens of galleries open their doors for the city’s oldest art walk tradition.

Purple glass prisms catch your eye in the sidewalks, cobblestones line the streets, and cast iron street lamps light the way. On the waterfront edge, Pioneer Square Habitat Beach opens up to Elliott Bay.

The whole neighborhood sits a short walk south of Pike Place Market.

Explore the Seattle Underground in Washington

You can pick between two tour companies to get below the streets.

Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour operates at 614 First Ave., and Beneath the Streets runs out of 102 Cherry St. Both run daily tours with multiple departure times, and each lasts about 60 to 75 minutes.

The underground involves stairs and uneven surfaces, so wear comfortable walking shoes. Getting there is easy if you take the Link Light Rail to Pioneer Square Station on the 1 Line.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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