Belltown Messenger

In 1907 the City of Seattle began to wash one of its seven hills into Puget Sound in a project known as the Denny Regrade. According to city engineer Reginald H. Thomson, the regrade benefited "The Seattle Spirit." At the end of the 19th century, Seattle had emerged as the largest city in the region.

In order to accommodate the anticipated expansion of downtown commerce, the city decided to level an entire hill. Although Denny Hill was smaller than Queen Anne or Capitol Hill, it was nonetheless a major feature, rising several hundred feet above Elliott Bay. Denny Hill covered a 60-block area, a working class neighborhood of residential homes, apartment buildings, and boarding houses. Even the great Washington Hotel, where Theodore Roosevelt had slept, lay on the hill.

With huge pipes blasting thousands of gallons of water, the city leveled the entire neighborhood. With true Seattle spirit, the city required property owners to either pay to have their houses lowered to the approved grade or to sell the house to the city for one dollar. A few holdouts remained on the hill. They either couldn't afford to lower their property or refused to leave their homes. The holdouts, left on isolated plots of land at the level of the old hill, found themselves isolated on spires of dirt. Without support, the columns of soil eventually collapsed.

Madison House (Hawthorne Books, $16.95), former Belltown resident Peter Donahue's first novel, meticulously recreates Seattle in the early years of the twentieth century. The plot focuses on a boarding house run by Maddie Ingram. Maddie bought the house with her modest earnings from an arduous and lucky expedition to the Yukon. With her life saving locked into the house, Maddie and her boarders become holdouts, as the city washes their old neighborhood into the bay.

A few words with Peter Donahue, author of Madison House: Your first book of short stories was set in Belltown, The Cornelius Arms. What is it about this place in Seattle that you find so compelling? I've lived in several of the old apartment buildings in the regrade, and each has its own character. However, the Cornelius always seemed to me the epicenter of the Denny Regrade. The place had a reputation. Now that the building belongs to the Art Institute of Seattle and houses its students. It's still probably an interesting place to live, but I can't imagine the building retains the varied and unpredictable character it did when 90-year-old retired seamen lived next door to speed junkies. Nonetheless, the building's remains an icon-at least in my eyes.

Have you written any other unpublished or soon-to-be published work set in Belltown?

I have a few short stories set in Belltown that I've published in literary journals. Also, significant portions of my novel-in-progress, set during the years immediately following World War II, take place in the regrade. The area is kind of my "postage stamp of native soil," as Faulkner termed the small corner of Mississippi he wrote about almost exclusively.

Are any of the original portions of Denny Hill still standing? You can stand by the Josephinum and, looking north, see the slight rise of what remains of Denny Hill. Likewise, if you stand on First and Blanchard, look east. Otherwise, there's nothing left.
-Matt Briggs