Seattle Now & Then: Polson Building Fire, 1974

(click to enlarge photos)

The Alaskan Way Viaduct was shut-down on the afternoon of June 14, 1974 when the still standing six floor Polson Building beside it at Columbia Street, was first ignited by an arsonist (apparently) and then bathed by the heavy streams seen here shooting above Alaskan Way.  There were other spouting hoses aimed at the Paulson, those from its east façade facing Western Avenue.  The first single alarm was made at 1:32 pm and fire fighting continued until 5:50 pm.

The Fire Department keeps good records. Galen Thomaier, the department’s historian as well as the curator of the Last Resort Fire Department, an interpretive museum for retired fire-fighting artifacts, was there in 1974.  (Ron Edge has inserted at the bottom of this blog a button to Thomaier’s museum web page.) Although that day not on duty he was there and surprised by the “four throbbing three-and-one-half inch lines (hoses) that were laid across Alaskan Way.  They led to a manifold that distributed both the salt water from the bay and municipal water from the hydrants.  Thomaier followed the hoses to their source, and found the Duwamish, then still  “the world’s most powerful fire boat afloat.”

Frank Shaw, one of our favorite historic photo sources, recorded these well-composed tableaux.  Near its center, uniformed fire fighters wrestle with a 55-foot long ground extension ladder while other fighters are implied by the bright silhouette that includes three steams shooting at the smoking building.  The atmosphere of spray gives back a shower on what Thomaier describes as a  “six person crew assigned to the six person ladder.” They wear helmets. Sixteen of the day’s crew temporarily wound up in the hospital from smoke inhalation.  There is also some falling debris in this mix.  Flying embers burned two of the Polson fire’s many uncovered pedestrian gawkers. The single man in the sports coat with a camera dashing across the puddle in the featured photo at the top was, according to Thomaier, “probably media and should not have been there.”  Shaw stands as close as allowed.

Years after the 1974 Polson fire, an investigative reporter with whom internal fire department records were shared, concluded a “most plausible theory…that the blaze had been set by pull-tab manufacturers from Chicago who were fighting the Polson Buildings owner, Benjamin Mayers (of Ace Novelty) for control of the Seattle-area pull-tab gambling market.”  In 1996 another un-caught arsonist torched the Polson, again taking the top two floors: the only two by then not guarded with sprinklers.  The principle victims of the 1996 fire were artists. The Polson had become what local art pundits described as one of the largest artists’ colonies on the West Coast.  When the renters were at first not allowed into the ruins to inventory loses, they joined a protest by painting on the street.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, lads? Yes Jean, Ron has supplied a rugged sampler of our more recent features that apply – somehow – to this one, and I following Ron have come home from fishing for some of the older of the roughly 1800 examples of repeat photography, hereabouts, that we have stocked in our now thirty-six year old pond.

============

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====

=====