Hiding Under Pioneer Square in Seattle is a Ghost Town from the 1880s with Sidewalks, Shops, and Saloons

The Seattle Underground, Washington

There’s another Seattle hiding under the one you know.

After the Great Fire of 1889 leveled downtown, the city made a crazy decision: instead of rebuilding at ground level, they raised the entire street grid and built on top of the ruins. The old Seattle never went away, it just got buried.

Here’s how one city became two, stacked on top of each other.

When John Back Overheated His Glue Pot

John Back was just trying to do his job.

At 2:30 p.m. on June 6, 1889, the young Swedish carpenter’s assistant was heating animal glue over a gasoline fire in Victor Clairmont’s basement cabinet shop.

Animal glue, made from boiled bones and hides, needed careful heating to stay workable for furniture assembly.

Back was using this common woodworking adhesive when his pot boiled over onto the open flame.

The shop sat in the basement of the Pontius Building at the southwest corner of Front Street and Madison Street. Wood chips and turpentine covered the floor.

Back grabbed water and threw it on the flames.

Big mistake. Water thinned the turpentine and spread the burning liquid throughout the basement workshop, turning a small accident into an unstoppable inferno.

Twenty-Five Blocks Burned to Ashes

The fire raged for 18 straight hours. From 2:30 p.m. on June 6 until 3:00 a.m. on June 7, 1889, flames consumed everything in their path.

Seattle’s volunteer fire department couldn’t handle the massive blaze. Twenty-five city blocks covering 120 acres were completely destroyed.

The fire wiped out the entire business district from University Street south to Dearborn Street.

Four major wharves between Union and Jackson streets burned completely, along with the city’s railroad terminals.

Wooden sidewalks, built as raised platforms above muddy streets, carried flames from building to building like fuses.

Property losses hit between $8 million and $20 million in 1889 dollars.

In today’s money, that equals roughly $697 million, making it one of the costliest urban disasters of the 19th century.

Toilets That Exploded Like Geysers

The city was built at sea level on filled tidelands made largely of sawdust from Henry Yesler’s steam-powered sawmill.

Yesler’s mill processed the timber that made Seattle rich, but sawdust fill created soggy, unstable ground.

Buildings needed wooden stilts for support. Streets turned into muddy messes during frequent rainstorms.

The city installed one wooden gravity-powered sewer pipe that carried waste downhill to Elliott Bay. During low tide, sewage flowed freely into Puget Sound.

High tide reversed everything. Toilets exploded like geysers, shooting sewage fountains up to 4 feet high into homes and businesses.

Seattle became infamous for its “fountain toilets” and imported “Crapper” toilets from England that malfunctioned twice daily during tidal cycles.

Building Seattle on Top of Seattle

Workers started by building massive concrete retaining walls.

These barriers stood 8 feet high and measured 4 to 12 feet thick, running parallel on either side of existing streets.

Crews filled the space between walls with dirt from surrounding hills.

They used sluicing techniques, channeling water to wash soil from higher elevations like Denny Hill down into the street gaps.

Building owners faced a choice: move their structures or rebuild on the same muddy ground.

Most rebuilt on their original lots, knowing their first floors would become underground basements.

For several years, Seattle looked like a giant construction zone.

Pedestrians climbed wooden ladders up to 35 feet tall to move between old sidewalks where businesses operated and new elevated streets where carriages traveled.

When Purple Glass Lit the Underground

Engineers solved the tricky problem of lighting spaces beneath raised streets.

Brick archways went up next to new road surfaces, creating covered passages above original sidewalks.

Vault lights became the clever solution for bringing natural light underground.

Workers installed thick glass panels over gaps between raised streets and building facades, creating skylights for the buried city below.

The vault lights used small panes of clear glass set into metal frames.

Over decades, these panels developed a purple or amethyst color due to manganese that reacted with sunlight.

You can still see these glass tiles on downtown Seattle sidewalks today.

When you walk through Pioneer Square, you’re stepping on the original skylights that once lit the underground world beneath your feet.

Underground Becomes the City’s Dark Side

Business owners gradually moved upstairs to the new street level, where customers could reach shops without climbing ladders.

The original ground floors became forgotten basement spaces. Seattle’s criminal element discovered the abandoned underground.

Illegal gambling halls, speakeasies, opium dens, and brothels operated in hidden passages beneath respectable businesses above.

At its peak during the early 1900s, around 2,000 people lived and worked in the underground city.

Homeless individuals, criminals, and others who existed outside conventional society made up this shadow community.

Underground spaces served multiple illegal purposes: flophouses for transients, gambling parlors, drug dens, and houses of prostitution.

The tunnel network created a hidden world where normal laws didn’t apply.

The 1907 Plague Scare Seals the Underground

City health officials panicked in 1907 about potential disease outbreaks in underground spaces.

Fears of bubonic plague, which had recently hit other West Coast cities, prompted drastic action.

The condemnation came just two years before Seattle planned to host the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.

City leaders wanted to present a clean, modern image to thousands of expected World’s Fair visitors.

Workers permanently sealed most entrances to underground spaces with concrete and steel barriers.

Access points got welded shut or bricked over to prevent unauthorized entry into condemned areas.

The basements were abandoned to rot in darkness and dampness.

Some spaces kept operating illegally as gambling halls and speakeasies during Prohibition, but most were left empty to decay.

Bill Speidel’s 1954 Preservation Campaign

By 1954, Pioneer Square had become one of Seattle’s worst neighborhoods.

Few people knew the area was Seattle’s birthplace and original business district. Many buildings faced demolition. Shirley Speidel had an idea.

She told her husband Bill, a Seattle Times columnist and publicist, to work on Pioneer Square restoration as a pro bono project.

Bill Speidel started researching the forgotten underground spaces with volunteer helpers.

In 1963, he published a Seattle Times article about the buried city that captured public imagination. Reader response was immediate.

In August 1964, The Seattle Times Troubleshooter column published an inquiry from reader “N.P.” asking about underground tours and invited interested people to contact Speidel directly.

Five Hundred People Show Up for the First Tour

Speidel got swamped. Over 300 letters and numerous phone calls arrived within two days of the August 3, 1964 newspaper mention.

On Memorial Day weekend 1965, the Junior Chamber of Commerce organized “Know Your Seattle Day” and asked Speidel to give underground tours.

He arrived at Pioneer Place Park to find it packed with people holding dollar bills. Exactly 500 people took the first official public tour, each paying $1.

Speidel collected $500 that day and realized he’d discovered something much bigger than simple neighborhood preservation.

By May 1965, Speidel had turned the Underground Tour into a regular business.

He hired local college students as tour guides and established scheduled daily tours that still operate today.

Visiting The Seattle Underground

Two companies run underground tours in Pioneer Square today.

Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour, the original operation, starts from 614 First Avenue in Pioneer Place Park between Cherry and James Streets.

Beneath the Streets offers tours from 102 Cherry Street, including Red Light District tours and Queer History walks.

Both provide one-hour guided tours through preserved underground passages. Tour tickets cost $22-26 for adults, with daily tours year-round except major holidays.

You can explore 200,000 square feet across four city blocks, seeing preserved storefronts with faded signs, old hotel remnants, bank teller cages, and 1890s artifacts.

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