List of structures on Elliott Bay
In the late 1880s and 1890s, a lack of legal clarity about ownership of lands between the low- and high-tide lines resulted in a massive number of structures on the tideflats, mostly poorly built and short-lived.
[2] "The craze for salt water," remarked Judge Thomas Burke, had "broken out again with greater violence than before ... [with] lunatics of high and low degree ... like so many cawing crows on the mudflats.
The geography of Elliott Bay has changed considerably in the period since people of European ancestry first settled in the Seattle area in the mid-19th century.
In particular, virtually all of the Industrial District and Sodo, as well as all of Harbor Island are built on landfill; also, there have been a series of smaller adjustments to the terrain of the Downtown waterfront, including the construction of the Alaskan Way Seawall.
Also, that same 1877 article refers to a pier "for Mr. Isaac Parker, in the rear of his lot on Commercial Street [First Avenue South], and immediately alongside the Craig & Hastings Wharf.
Prior to the Great Seattle Fire, anything south of King Street and west of roughly Eighth Avenue was on mudflats.
[6] Seattle Dry Dock and Ship Building Company was owned by the Moran Brothers and Bailey Gatzert.
[6] The caption of an 1882 Theodore Peiser photo on the University of Washington Libraries site suggests that Crawford's and Harrington's Wharves were distinct.
The 1888 Sanborn map shows (roughly from south to north): All from [50] Going roughly from land to open water, structures on the pier included: All from [60] As discussed below in section Trestle (and other) bridges, italics indicate structures shown on one or more maps, but little other evidence that they actually existed.
As Matthew Klingle has written, "paper railroads... crisscrossed Puget Sound, routes planned and licensed but never built..."[79]
Farther south, the 1890 Anderson map (which, as indicated above, shows rail lines that were not yet completed), shows Railroad Avenue beginning on the West Seattle shore of the bay near the wheat elevators and warehouses, heading roughly east across the bay, then turning to run due north to King Street, a block west of Commercial Street (today's First Avenue South), along the line of today's Alaskan Way South, where it meets the abovementioned line opened in 1887.
R.R., and began running north from Seattle October 12, 1891, providing a link to the Canadian Pacific Railway.
[110] Maritime Boat and Engine Works business is not indicated on the 1918 Port of Seattle map; southeast of the Iowa Street Ferry Landing it shows, from northwest to southeast (headed away from Elliott Bay to what is steadily more specifically the Duwamish River): Similarly, but not identically, from the 1918 City of Seattle Harbor Department Map of Central Waterfront District: The 1971 harbor map lists West Waterway Lumber Co. here as Pier 7.
The mudflats south of King Street were filled in at various times starting July 29, 1895[157] and extending into the late 1910s or, possibly in some cases, the 1920s.
[158] This list runs roughly counterclockwise, first running north up the east shore of the mudflats then turning to include both the north and west shore of the mudflats, as well as a few buildings in the middle of the flats along the early 20th-century rail lines before landfill was complete.
[185] Eventually the largest steel mill in the Pacific Northwest,[181] the Isaacson Forge division was sold to the Earle M. Jorgensen Company in 1965.
Pacific Steamship's building (BLDG 1) was "a very modern passenger and freight terminal" when it was built in 1925,[146] and remains the hub of this facility nearly a century later.
[115] Pier 37, built 1941 for the Port of Seattle as a general cargo terminal was taken over in 1960 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as its District Headquarters[202] The Port of Seattle reacquired Pier 37 in 1965, but it continued to function as the Corps of Engineers District HQ at least until 1971.
From here north, the waterfront faces the open water of Elliott Bay, rather than the channelized Duwamish River.
Around 1970 Pier 48 was remodeled; the north side became a ferry slip for the Alaska Marine Highway System, and was used until they moved to Bellingham, Washington[208] in 1989.
[231] [100] In 1938, the Puget Sound Navigation Company, known as the Black Ball Line, rebuilt Colman Dock in Art Deco style, matching the streamlined MV Kalakala ferry they had introduced three years prior.
[243] According to Paul Dorpat, the name "Colman Dock" went out of use with the 1944 rename as Pier 52, but came back with the early 1980s expansion.
A remark on a photo from MOHAI indicates that the late 1890s Northern Pacific Railroad Pier 2, serving the Alaska Steamship Co., was approximately at this site.
[275] The north side and outboard end of Pier 57 are now part of Waterfront Park,[269] and since June 29, 2012 it has been the site of the Seattle Great Wheel.
