Pioneer Building
The Pioneer Building is the product of a construction boom that followed the Great Fire of 1889. Its original owner, Henry Yesler, was one of Seattle’s first and most prominent white residents.
Henry Yesler of Ohio arrived in Seattle in late 1852 and soon established the first steam-powered sawmill in the region. Yesler’s mill opened in early 1853, providing the town with its first industry and creating important opportunities for employment among both American Indians and new arrivals in the area. Yesler built his house in the same place where the Pioneer Building is today.[1]
On the afternoon of June 6, 1889, a woodworker in a cabinet shop on the corner of Front and Madison Streets dropped hot glue onto a pile of wood shavings and started the Great Fire 1889. Within an hour the entire downtown was ablaze. Seattle’s Mayor Robert Moran had an entire city block dynamited in an attempt to stop the fire from spreading but the flames jumped the gap. Firefighters discovered that the water mains had failed when they futilely ran from one standpipe to another. When the fire finally burned itself out the next day, 120 acres of Seattle’s main business district, as well as the city’s piers, wharves, and trestles had disappeared.[2]
Rebuilding began immediately in the “burnt district.” Most of the buildings around Pioneer Place, including the Pioneer Building, were built within a year or two of the fire. The Pioneer Building is, in fact, the best-known work of Elmer Fisher, Seattle’s most prolific post-fire architect. Upon completion in 1892, the building won an award from the American Institute of Architects for “being the finest building West of Chicago.”[3]
Yesler, who commissioned the Pioneer Building after his home burned in the fire as well as two neighboring buildings, took part in a heated debate with the City Council over a proposal to raise and widen the streets of the business district before everything was rebuilt. Yesler complained that replatting the streets near his properties was delaying the Pioneer Building’s construction. The plan to alter the streets went forward, however, and most of the Pioneer Square streets were raised by an average of five feet per block.[4]
[1] Mildred Andrews, "A Change of Worlds," in Pioneer Square: Seattle's Oldest Neighborhood (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 15-17; “Summary for 606 1st AVE / Parcel ID 0939000150,” Seattle.gov (2004), http://web6.seattle.gov/DPD/HistoricalSite/QueryResult.aspx?ID=-1119623451.
[2] Matthew Klingle, Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 54-55. For further accounts of the fire, see Frederick James Grant, History of Seattle, Washington (New York: American Publishing and Engraving, 1891), 212-34; and Clarence B. Bagley, History of Seattle from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1916), 419-28.
[3] David Williams, Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 50; “Summary for 606 1st Ave.”
[4] Williams, Too High and Too Steep, 55; “Summary for 606 1st Ave.”
Credits and Sources:
Description by Madison Heslop on behalf of the American Society for Environmental History.
Andrews, Mildred. "A Change of Worlds." In Pioneer Square: Seattle's Oldest Neighborhood, 7-24. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005.
Bagley, Clarence B. History of Seattle from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1916.
Grant, Frederick James. History of Seattle, Washington. New York: American Publishing and Engraving, 1891.
Klingle, Matthew. Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
“Summary for 606 1st AVE / Parcel ID 0939000150.”Seattle.gov, 2004.http://web6.seattle.gov/DPD/HistoricalSite/QueryResult.aspx?ID=-1119623451.
Williams, David B. Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015.
