Archives West Finding Aid

The Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889, began a little after 2 p.m. in Clairmont's woodworking shop at Madison Avenue and Front Street (now First Avenue), and quickly expanded to the adjacent Denny Block building. At the time Seattle's water system had limited capacity, and the volunteer fire department found the water pressure insufficient for fighting the fire. By 4 p.m. a four-block area was in flames. The fire, driven by wind from the northwest, continued to spread. Only Elliott Bay on the west and vacant lots on the north and east contained the fire until a bucket brigade saved the Boston Block at Second and Columbia. About 6:30 p.m. the new Occidental Hotel at Yesler Avenue and James Street caught fire, and it became clear the flames would spread to the wooden frame buildings south of Yesler. On the east, citizens used wet blankets, mops, and buckets to save the King County Courthouse and Henry Yesler's home along Third Avenue. During the evening, however, all of Seattle south of Yesler Avenue and west of Fourth Street burned except for the Oregon Improvement Company dock. The tideflats south of King Street stopped the fire's spread south.

The burned areas were guarded and patrolled by a militia of members of the Washington National Guard from Seattle, Tacoma, and Port Townsend until June 11, 1889. After they dispirsed, however, thousands of scavengers and souvenir hunters began searching the ruins, so one company resumed the 24-hour watch. The commander called for reserves from Vancouver in southern Washington Territory to relieve the exhaused militia, and Company H of the First Regiment arrived on June 15. Martial law was never in effect, and the National Guard turned looters over to the regular civil courts. On June 18, the Seattle police swore in special policemen to take over from the National Guard.

By a month after the fire many businesses had set up shop in temporary locations. Many set up canvas tents where their buildings had stood. Some had time to save equipment and merchandise during the spread of the fire, and others restocked from shipments and relief that poured in from all over. To prevent another fire, the city of Seattle purchased the formerly private water company and improved water pressure and pipes, decreed that all new buildings in the business district had to be made of stone or brick, and established a professional fire department.

This collection demonstrates issues in determining the original creator of photographs that exist in multiple places in particular because the event was so important. This finding aid describes three generations of prints of John P. Soule's photographs of the aftermath of the Seattle Fire in 1889. While all the images are the same, they come from various sources and have been attributed to different photographers. The Harry Bringhurst album (also called the Widden album after the donor) includes original prints made by John Soule which were attributed to Harry Bringhurst who became Seattle's fire chief in 1906. This attribution came from an interview with his daughter made by Pam Widden (the donor of the album) when the daughter was elderly. She remembered that her father liked to make photographs and in her interview assumed that these photographs were made by him. However, they are clearly by John Soule and at least one of them is stamped with John Soule's name as the photographer. It is probable that the album was made as a gift for the fire chief at one time by someone who bought copies of the Soule photographs. This album contains five more of Soule's photographs than were included in the souvenir album Soule put together after the fire to sell his photographs.

Another problematic issue for photographs of the Seattle fire is that other photographers such as Thomas Prosch, Asahel Curtis and Lawrence Lindsley copied the work of many original photographers and put their names on them which helps to create confusion as to who the orignal photographer was.

The John Soule Seattle After the Great Fire Album of June 6, 1899 was probably created by Soule to market as a souvenir right after the fire. It is interesting that this album does not have as many views as the Bringhurst album which likely indicates that it was a way to market a selection of his fire photographs quickly. At some point, probably after Soule died in 1904, his original glass plate negatives of the fire were acquired by a Seattle photographer named McManus. McManus altered the negatives by adding text to them including "c. McManus 1912." A Seattle photographer, Lawrence Lindsley, eventually acquired the Soule negatives (which were still in the original negative box) and he attributed them to McManus by writing "negs made by McManus'' on the negative box. Later when the negatives came to Special Collections modern prints were made from Soule's original glass plate negatives which had been altered by McManus. This continued the mistaken attribution of McManus as the photographer. The existence of the albums makes it clear that the glass plate negatives were truly created by Soule, yet the alterations made by McManus would otherwise make this difficult to determine. Because all of these various versions of the Soule photographs were acquired at different times and never examined together, the attribution of three different creators for the same photographs persisted. This along with the fact that since Soule's photographs were popular, copies of his originals also exist in other collections such as the Prosch Seattle Views Album #2 and the Asahel Curtis Collection and are not attributed to Soule. A final set of prints which were made with the negatives altered by McManus were made for the 30th anniversary of the fire on June 6, 1919. They have text on the back which is titled "Vision Plus Spirit" which talks about the "Seattle Spirit."