The city's "Great Fire of 1889" destroyed all the wharves and trestles on the waterfront south of University Street. Railroad Avenue, as it was then called, extended offshore about as far as the western side of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. That means the waterfront trolley in the "now" scene is a short way off the doomed dock showing in the "then" scene.

An upset pot of boiling glue ignited the city's "Great Fire" of 1889 around 2:30 in the afternoon of an unseasonably hot June 6. As the napalm-like ammunition swept across the solvent-soaked floor, it lit shavings in the cabinetmaker's shop at the southwest corner of Madison Street and First Avenue. Driven by wind, the fire quickly moved south through the mostly fire-trap frame structures along First Avenue and the waterfront.

This scene was photographed around 4 p.m. At the center of the picture, smoke is enveloping the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad Depot at the waterfront foot of Columbia Street. By 4:30 the depot was ash. In another half-hour the fire was racing through Yesler's Wharf, setting ablaze its wooden warehouses, the Moran Bros. Foundry (Robert Moran was then Seattle's mayor) and the Mechanics Mill from which this photograph was taken.

Salvaged goods crowd the edge of the timber quay while the figures in the right foreground by the railroad's lift are nearly finished wondering if they should abandon the scene. By this hour it was apparent to most that with the insistent wind and not enough water pressure to fight the flames, the fire's victory was inevitable. Also by this time, the fire thundered with exploding ammunition, whiskey kegs and dynamite deliberately but ineffectively set off by Moran to try to flatten the buildings south of Columbia before the fire jumped the street.

In 1887, the city had given the railroad a franchise to drive piles for tracks along the waterfront. So everything here is nearly new. Within days of the 1889 fire, the railroad rebuilt its waterfront tracks.