5 ms·

Here in Seattle the underground part of the city is open for tours (parts of it anyways). They built the current downtown on top of the old one, so it's pretty

by dmoy 3y ago

Here in Seattle the underground part of the city is open for tours (parts of it anyways). They built the current downtown on top of the old one, so it's pretty surreal down there. Not even tunnels in this case, just like a whole-ass other set of streets and storefronts, all abandoned, partially buried, and covered on top.

voidfunc 3y ago
The history of Seattle is fairly interesting for those who are not aware of it. A lot of cities have rebuilt from fires, done terraforming etc, Seattle kind of took it to a whole new level.
- cycomanic 3y ago
  This prompted me to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqRP0ualoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqRP0ualoI "fairly interesting" is quite the understatement! Absolutely fascinating and hilarious at the same time! Thanks for your post TIL
  - eps 3y ago
    Video could really use more photos and visuals, but it's just some dude talking really fast without pauses. Could've been a blog post.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Chicago also lifted up its street level, I don’t think Seattle was unprecedented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago It’s the only article linked with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle, however.
  - js2 3y ago
    Sacramento: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-original-street-level-of-sacramento-sacramento-california https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-original-street-leve... Atlanta: https://www.atlantafamilies.org/underground-atlanta-history/ https://www.atlantafamilies.org/underground-atlanta-history/
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    There's also a certain amount of "and then you're done" here. Maybe one day we'll decide to raise Miami or New Orleans, but once all of your cities have raised themselves out of the swamps they were built on, you don't need to keep raising them for tradition's sake. You're done. And new cities, such as they are, we no longer allow to build below grade in swamps.
- 13of40 3y ago
  If you want to see something trippy, take a look at the land just west of Magnolia and Discovery Park on the King County Parcel Viewer. They were planning to fill that in back in the day and on the map you can still see all of the streets they planned and even some parcels that are still owned by people who tried to buy in early. All underwater of course.
thehoff 3y ago
This is so cool. I didn’t believe you so I had to look it up and watch some youtube videos, fascinating.
actionfromafar 3y ago
Like New New York in Futurama?!
ajmurmann 3y ago
It's wild that we used to do radical changes to cities like this and now changing zoning or making cities walkable are frequently seen as unfathomable.
- kurthr 3y ago
  Really? It seems like once a group of people have lived somewhere for a generation or two and have a $Trillion invested in a place they probably are going to make it hard for new comers to make radical changes. Kinda like a giant codebase that's been maintained for 50 years and has a million regular users is going to make updates difficult. Find a place people don't already want to live and make that better with great new housing designs? Why do does someone deserve to move somewhere new and live there cheaper than the people who already live there? Now, that said there are huge distortions to the market driven by taxes and leverage. Many expensive places have 10% unoccupied housing. Think about how much that is. Imagine the time, cost, and disruption to build even 10,000 units of housing, when there are 40-50k units unoccupied.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    People want to live near evisting jobs so your someplace new will be a suburb and generally has constraints because of that. You have to get people into the city for example which forces car dependance for example.
    - lotsoweiners 3y ago
      Sure but if your preferred design is as great and appealing as you say then after a few generations, your new city might be getting the jobs.
      - bluGill 3y ago
        We can look at mining towns to see projected growth. Mining towns have to start where the ore is, and they generally can pay a lot more than average to attract people. However such towns tend to die when the mine closes unless there is some other reason for the town to exist. That other reason is not how nice the town is, but geography. Note that I said town above not city. Cities exist for geographical reasons, if you don't have the great port (either ocean or river) to attract people 300 years ago to settle there you won't get people today.
mcronce 3y ago
I did a few of those tours when I lived out there. They were very cool
mordechai9000 3y ago
I grew up in Seattle, and my parents would sometimes mention the underground tour, but I never actually saw it until I was in my late 20s and I took my girlfriend home to visit. When I did the tour, the guide really played up the brothel/prohibition angle and made a few off-color jokes about that part of the history (more burlesque humor than outright offensive). So maybe that's why parents never took me.
richardw 3y ago
I’m not sure what the mechanism for burying a town or city section is. It seems to have happened since antiquity, so it’s obviously the rational choice over millennia, but my intuition doesn’t connect. (Aside from soil deposits and erosion.)
- derekp7 3y ago
  For ancient archeological sites, burial happens when places get abandoned (typically due to war, or economic reasons, or famine). A lot of land isn't flat, so to build structures you have to level off a piece of land which involves moving dirt from one place to another. After a couple centuries of abandonment natural flooding and erosion will move that dirt around and bury the structures. New settlements come in and build on top of the new surface layer. For cities like Seattle, the original town was all wood and burned. Prior to that it was prone to flooding. During the reconstruction they decided to haul in dirt to raise the level of the city for better water management, but that would take a while. So businesses were rebuilt in place (but out of brick and stone), while dirt was being hauled in and new street levels were raised. New buildings were then built on top of the existing (essentially turning the existing ones into basements / foundations for the new ones). Similar thing in Chicago -- the city was raised up, and the second floors of buildings became the ground floor, first floor became basements, etc.
  - richardw 3y ago
    Thank you
SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
Butte MT has a pretty cool little system like this. Basically a semi underground street system. A neat relic from a different time
fzeindl 3y ago
How can one imagine this? A big underground hall with a concrete ceiling in which there are buildings? Or are the underground building like a -1 floor to the ones above?
- hervature 3y ago
  The did it in 2 stages. Before that, you need to know some history. A fire burnt down the majority of downtown. So, they had to rebuild everything anyway. The downtown was also low enough that the sewer would flow into the bay at high tide. After the fire, they made certain parts of the downtown streets up to 2 stories higher to accommodate a functional sewer system. First, they made the streets higher without touching the storefronts. "Crossing the road" would have required climbing ladders. Once the streets were in place, they made the sidewalk and the new storefronts on the old first or second story. So, when you walk around that part of Seattle, there is sometimes just two stories of air beneath the sidewalk. You can identify these sidewalks through their use of amethyst blocks which actually serve/served as sunlight. As you can imagine, a block can consist of a single large structure and so sometimes the basement of these buildings are huge empty spaces. If I recall correctly, the Seattle underground is actually disappearing as development occurs and put these large basements into use. However, I do believe there is a movement to try to preserve at least part of the underground by simply buying enough adjoining buildings and funding their upkeep with tours (which is where I got this information). In terms of touristy things, I think definitely one of the more unique things in the USA and probably has similar vibes to the catacombs of Paris (without the bones).
  - fzeindl 3y ago
    > First, they made the streets higher without touching the storefronts. "Crossing the road" would have required climbing ladders. And what was underneath those higher streets? A giant block of concrete? Scaffolding?
- hattmall 3y ago
  This is exactly underground Atlanta. They raised the ground level and built the new city on top of the old. The old storefronts and businesses are still there. About 1/8th of it is publicly open, but there's a ton more that's closed off and is just trains driving under the city.
gambiting 3y ago
Like....Futurama style? Where new York is still there in its entirety just buried under New New York?
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Almost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
  - rvnx 3y ago
    Seems amazing! I can see on the tours when you purchase the tickets online yourself: "There is a $2.50 convenience applied to each ticket at checkout." What does that mean ? You have to give tips to a computer ? Is that a thing in the US ? Like at the self-service checkout ?
    - odux 3y ago
      It used to be “for the convenience of being able to buy a ticket from home” which is ridiculous by itself because online tickets makes things cheaper the venue. Now it is “for the convenience of the ability to buy tickets at all” because in some places that is the only way to buy tickets. I had an electric company that charged a $2 fee for online payment. I seriously considered paying them by check every month. The choice seemed to be between they charging me $ for an online payment or I charging them $ (indirectly for all the labor it takes for processing a paper check, they even sent me a prepaid envelope). It is atrocious that a company charges us for making something cheaper for them. (I ended up using my banks bill pay feature because I didn’t want to risk a check being lost in the mail).
      - rvnx 3y ago
        Thank you!
m3047 3y ago
Tacoma has some underground, too. Worked in a building where they had us in a shitty office on the bottom floor, in back, butted up against the hillside. We figured out there was some kind of storage back there, and because the place smelled so musty and the ventilation was so bad we were kinda curious. We rigged the door so that once it was opened it wouldn't latch shut again and waited; a few days later we were in luck. Going through the door there was the whole brick facade of the building (burnt, ironically), and the bottom of the present day sidewalk, three stories up.

by dmoy 3y ago

voidfunc 3y ago

The history of Seattle is fairly interesting for those who are not aware of it. A lot of cities have rebuilt from fires, done terraforming etc, Seattle kind of took it to a whole new level.

cycomanic 3y ago
This prompted me to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqRP0ualoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqRP0ualoI "fairly interesting" is quite the understatement! Absolutely fascinating and hilarious at the same time! Thanks for your post TIL
- eps 3y ago
  Video could really use more photos and visuals, but it's just some dude talking really fast without pauses. Could've been a blog post.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Chicago also lifted up its street level, I don’t think Seattle was unprecedented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago It’s the only article linked with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle, however.
- js2 3y ago
  Sacramento: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-original-street-level-of-sacramento-sacramento-california https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-original-street-leve... Atlanta: https://www.atlantafamilies.org/underground-atlanta-history/ https://www.atlantafamilies.org/underground-atlanta-history/
- saalweachter 3y ago
  There's also a certain amount of "and then you're done" here. Maybe one day we'll decide to raise Miami or New Orleans, but once all of your cities have raised themselves out of the swamps they were built on, you don't need to keep raising them for tradition's sake. You're done. And new cities, such as they are, we no longer allow to build below grade in swamps.
13of40 3y ago
If you want to see something trippy, take a look at the land just west of Magnolia and Discovery Park on the King County Parcel Viewer. They were planning to fill that in back in the day and on the map you can still see all of the streets they planned and even some parcels that are still owned by people who tried to buy in early. All underwater of course.

thehoff 3y ago

This is so cool. I didn’t believe you so I had to look it up and watch some youtube videos, fascinating.

actionfromafar 3y ago

Like New New York in Futurama?!

ajmurmann 3y ago

It's wild that we used to do radical changes to cities like this and now changing zoning or making cities walkable are frequently seen as unfathomable.

kurthr 3y ago
Really? It seems like once a group of people have lived somewhere for a generation or two and have a $Trillion invested in a place they probably are going to make it hard for new comers to make radical changes. Kinda like a giant codebase that's been maintained for 50 years and has a million regular users is going to make updates difficult. Find a place people don't already want to live and make that better with great new housing designs? Why do does someone deserve to move somewhere new and live there cheaper than the people who already live there? Now, that said there are huge distortions to the market driven by taxes and leverage. Many expensive places have 10% unoccupied housing. Think about how much that is. Imagine the time, cost, and disruption to build even 10,000 units of housing, when there are 40-50k units unoccupied.
- bluGill 3y ago
  People want to live near evisting jobs so your someplace new will be a suburb and generally has constraints because of that. You have to get people into the city for example which forces car dependance for example.
  - lotsoweiners 3y ago
    Sure but if your preferred design is as great and appealing as you say then after a few generations, your new city might be getting the jobs.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      We can look at mining towns to see projected growth. Mining towns have to start where the ore is, and they generally can pay a lot more than average to attract people. However such towns tend to die when the mine closes unless there is some other reason for the town to exist. That other reason is not how nice the town is, but geography. Note that I said town above not city. Cities exist for geographical reasons, if you don't have the great port (either ocean or river) to attract people 300 years ago to settle there you won't get people today.

mcronce 3y ago

I did a few of those tours when I lived out there. They were very cool

mordechai9000 3y ago

I grew up in Seattle, and my parents would sometimes mention the underground tour, but I never actually saw it until I was in my late 20s and I took my girlfriend home to visit. When I did the tour, the guide really played up the brothel/prohibition angle and made a few off-color jokes about that part of the history (more burlesque humor than outright offensive). So maybe that's why parents never took me.

richardw 3y ago

I’m not sure what the mechanism for burying a town or city section is. It seems to have happened since antiquity, so it’s obviously the rational choice over millennia, but my intuition doesn’t connect. (Aside from soil deposits and erosion.)

derekp7 3y ago
For ancient archeological sites, burial happens when places get abandoned (typically due to war, or economic reasons, or famine). A lot of land isn't flat, so to build structures you have to level off a piece of land which involves moving dirt from one place to another. After a couple centuries of abandonment natural flooding and erosion will move that dirt around and bury the structures. New settlements come in and build on top of the new surface layer. For cities like Seattle, the original town was all wood and burned. Prior to that it was prone to flooding. During the reconstruction they decided to haul in dirt to raise the level of the city for better water management, but that would take a while. So businesses were rebuilt in place (but out of brick and stone), while dirt was being hauled in and new street levels were raised. New buildings were then built on top of the existing (essentially turning the existing ones into basements / foundations for the new ones). Similar thing in Chicago -- the city was raised up, and the second floors of buildings became the ground floor, first floor became basements, etc.
- richardw 3y ago
  Thank you

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago

Butte MT has a pretty cool little system like this. Basically a semi underground street system. A neat relic from a different time

fzeindl 3y ago

How can one imagine this? A big underground hall with a concrete ceiling in which there are buildings? Or are the underground building like a -1 floor to the ones above?

hervature 3y ago
The did it in 2 stages. Before that, you need to know some history. A fire burnt down the majority of downtown. So, they had to rebuild everything anyway. The downtown was also low enough that the sewer would flow into the bay at high tide. After the fire, they made certain parts of the downtown streets up to 2 stories higher to accommodate a functional sewer system. First, they made the streets higher without touching the storefronts. "Crossing the road" would have required climbing ladders. Once the streets were in place, they made the sidewalk and the new storefronts on the old first or second story. So, when you walk around that part of Seattle, there is sometimes just two stories of air beneath the sidewalk. You can identify these sidewalks through their use of amethyst blocks which actually serve/served as sunlight. As you can imagine, a block can consist of a single large structure and so sometimes the basement of these buildings are huge empty spaces. If I recall correctly, the Seattle underground is actually disappearing as development occurs and put these large basements into use. However, I do believe there is a movement to try to preserve at least part of the underground by simply buying enough adjoining buildings and funding their upkeep with tours (which is where I got this information). In terms of touristy things, I think definitely one of the more unique things in the USA and probably has similar vibes to the catacombs of Paris (without the bones).
- fzeindl 3y ago
  > First, they made the streets higher without touching the storefronts. "Crossing the road" would have required climbing ladders. And what was underneath those higher streets? A giant block of concrete? Scaffolding?
hattmall 3y ago
This is exactly underground Atlanta. They raised the ground level and built the new city on top of the old. The old storefronts and businesses are still there. About 1/8th of it is publicly open, but there's a ton more that's closed off and is just trains driving under the city.

gambiting 3y ago

Like....Futurama style? Where new York is still there in its entirety just buried under New New York?

justsomehnguy 3y ago
Almost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
- rvnx 3y ago
  Seems amazing! I can see on the tours when you purchase the tickets online yourself: "There is a $2.50 convenience applied to each ticket at checkout." What does that mean ? You have to give tips to a computer ? Is that a thing in the US ? Like at the self-service checkout ?
  - odux 3y ago
    It used to be “for the convenience of being able to buy a ticket from home” which is ridiculous by itself because online tickets makes things cheaper the venue. Now it is “for the convenience of the ability to buy tickets at all” because in some places that is the only way to buy tickets. I had an electric company that charged a $2 fee for online payment. I seriously considered paying them by check every month. The choice seemed to be between they charging me $ for an online payment or I charging them $ (indirectly for all the labor it takes for processing a paper check, they even sent me a prepaid envelope). It is atrocious that a company charges us for making something cheaper for them. (I ended up using my banks bill pay feature because I didn’t want to risk a check being lost in the mail).
    - rvnx 3y ago
      Thank you!

m3047 3y ago

Tacoma has some underground, too. Worked in a building where they had us in a shitty office on the bottom floor, in back, butted up against the hillside. We figured out there was some kind of storage back there, and because the place smelled so musty and the ventilation was so bad we were kinda curious. We rigged the door so that once it was opened it wouldn't latch shut again and waited; a few days later we were in luck. Going through the door there was the whole brick facade of the building (burnt, ironically), and the bottom of the present day sidewalk, three stories up.