When the first settlers came to Seattle they would have seen large hills across the landscape. In the 1850’s Arthur Denny and William Bell claimed one for themselves; which later became what we now call Denny Hill. Each picked a portion and settled on the hill with their families respectively. The area flourished as a cheaper residential area for downtown workers. As the city around the hill started to grow and thrive, so did the need to improve the flow of commerce from one side of the city to the other. Denny Hills highest point was at about 232 feet, somewhere around where the “Darth Vadar” building stands today—Blanchard and 4th. “Denny Hill was the greatest impediment to going anywhere.” (Williams 148) R.H. Thomson being the city surveyor at the time decided to take on this challenge. In 1897 the city passed an ordinance for the Regrade. It ended up taking five different regrades over an almost 30-year period. The first regrade was from Pike to Denny street up to first street. The land was washed into Elliott Bay by various forms of razing. They utilized railroads, steam shovels and hydraulic cannons to accomplish the regrades. This was a very large undertaking for such a young city.

Analyzing the fire insurance maps helps show the change of the block and the effects of the regrades over almost two decades. The maps span from the pre regrade period and through the fourth regrade. It’s easy to see the dynamic changes that sweep through the block.

The first two maps show the predominate residential buildings with almost no one residing near the water in 1888, the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad would have been running at this point but very young at this time. We can start to see the growth when comparing to the 1893 map. The green building Chin’e laundry --possibly short for Chinese laundry but there were no pictures or address to help discover it's full name-- looks like it has expanded with the influx of people to the area. We can also see an increase of buildings along the waterfront jumping at the chance to be closer to the rail line and the trade that comes with it—the Great Northern Railroad had not yet absorbed the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern railroad at this point, so trade is still limited to the West Coast. Not that that’s anything to snuff at, trade with California was an important part of the growth we see in Seattle at the time. The regrade has not yet started at this point.

Once the Great Northern Railroad has established itself in the city the waterfront sees a spike in business. In the second set of fire insurance maps there is a larger presence of Warehouses on the waterfront to deal with the influx of industry and trade that is bustling through the city. They had to have “relocated” the people we saw taking up resident on the shore. By 1905 the second regrade was well underway. The strip of land directly behind the occidental warehouse shows that little to no one is settling on that strip in part because there is still a steep incline left over from the first regrade, not easily seen in the map. The remnants of the Denny hill incline are what is cutting off Blanchard and Lenora from the waterfront today and it seem like it was a difficult incline to settle on then. We also see the increase of businesses to support the people currently living in the city, such as mail services and the boarding house that cares for people and their horse needs. Seattle is starting to make accommodations for transportation and people.

The third set of Fire Insurance maps shows the blocks demographics right at the end of the third and fourth regrade. We can see a combination of residential and businesses. Although it looks like the residential is being overrun by the business and industry along the waterfront. There are more hotels and warehouses with very few people with solitary buildings. Seems like there are more rail tracks that have gone in to help deal with the increase of industry down at the waterfront. The rail line which extends along the coast lying directly behind the warehouse is still in operation to today, an updated form helps cargo trains by-pass the city but still participate in trade and ultimately the economy of the area. It’s hard to track when Elliott Avenue moved or why exactly, all that can be said is that it did, but we can assume based off other infrastructure projects happening at this time that it was at the behest of the city and it’s rising population and trade.

Now its difficult to tell exactly why there was such a large chunk of time between the fourth and fifth regrade. The fourth ending 1911 and the fifth starting 1929. There is the fact that World War I happened right in the middle of this and concerns shifted to the global stage may have affected the attention. Money and support also may have played a part in the delay its hard to track what the exact cause was. The last regrade was not like the ones before it, because it was so late so many businesses and residents had secured themselves. The city and it's councils had to be more creative in how they got the dirt away from the city. They couldn't just rip apart neighborhoods like they had done in the past. They had to maneuver the dirt from above 4^th street and to the water where they had self-dumping barges to drop the dirt in the bay. Not something the city would ever dream of doing today. It's another instance of the city not understanding the environmental implications of this project and others like it.

All these regrades accumulated to allow space for expansion and the freedom of movement of trade through the city, as well as accommodate the influx of people flocking to the booming economy. This need for the waterfront to support the cities economy and transportation needs would become part of the cities identity and continue the pattern into the future as will be seen in the rest of the sections on this website. The symbiotic relationship between city and transportation of goods and people is just beginning.