About 2:30 p.m., June 6, 1889, a 24-year-old Swedish carpenter named John Back allowed a pot of glue being heated over a gas fire in the Victor Clairmont and Company Cabinet Shop in the subbasement of the Pontius Building, located on the site of the Old Federal Building on First Avenue, to boil over

igniting wood chips and turpentine covering the floor. Back stupidly threw water onto the glue pot, only to spark a blazing fire that came to be known as the Great Seattle Fire. Amazingly, the glue pot survived the fire, and can today be seen at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry. Twelve hours later when the fire burned out, fifty-eight city blocks, about 116 acres, had been reduced to ashes. No lives were lost, but the city boasted that a million or so rats were eradicated. Fortunately for history, the many Seattle photographers of the time, some losing their photography studios to the fire, extensively documented the tragedy from beginning to end. Hundreds of spectacular photographs survive, capturing the early moments of the fire, the city’s ruination, the recovery and rebuilding.

To learn more about John Back and the Great Seattle Fire, follow this link to my Substack where I write about Seattle history: Beach Ramblings