A City at Work: Images from the Seattle Municipal Archives Photo Collection

Reshaping the City: Introduction

More than any other major American city, Seattle's geography has been transformed by several ambitious feats of civil engineering. These accomplishments include the flattening of downtown from the International District and Pioneer Square to Lake Union (raising Pioneer Square and lowering elevations north, in some cases, by more than 100 feet); removing the northern portion of Beacon Hill to open up the Rainier Valley to downtown; filling Elliott Bay south of downtown from the East Waterway to Beacon Hill (creating today's Industrial District); lowering Lake Washington and changing the lake's Puget Sound outlet from the Black and Duwamish Rivers to a new Ship Canal from Union Bay to Shilshole; straightening and deepening the Duwamish Waterway (making it navigable for oceangoing ships), and the undertaking of many smaller regrades and landfills that altered neighborhoods and shorelines.

Ross Shire Hotel, 6th Avenue & Marion Street, 1914. [Item No: 240] One of several privately owned "pinnacles" in regraded areas where private land-owners did not arrange to have their property lowered at the same time the City paid to have the adjoining street regraded.

The many grading, filling and channelizing projects were undertaken by the City, King County, U.S. Government, and private landowners for a century following 1870. The bulk of the Photograph Collection's regrading material includes post-1910 work performed by the City.

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