COURTESY OF DAN KERLEE

Looking down Wall Street through the ruins of the 1910 Belltown fire, we note what was then still a commonplace of street life: The men all wear suits and hats and, apart from the two women in the foreground, there are no others to be seen. Early in 1962, the 530-foot-long Galbraith Bacon dock seen in the "then" photo was cleared to build the Edgewater Inn (at the end of the street below).

	PAUL DORPAT

By 1910 James Galbraith and Cecil Bacon were old hands on the waterfront. After Seattle's "Great Fire" of 1889, Galbraith began dealing wholesale grain, hay, plaster and concrete in a small wharf near the foot of Washington Street. In 1900 he moved with Bacon to the new Pier 3 (renumbered 54 during World War II and home of Ivar's since 1938). Soon the prospering partners moved north again to the new Pier 67 at the foot of Wall Street.

By chance 1910 was the year that the first motorized fire-fighting apparatus was put in operation here, but to little effect with this fire. Only a sudden rain and quieting of the wind stopped it.

The Wall Street Pier and part of the Galbraith Bacon sign along the crest of the pier shed can be seen here through the filter of the still-smoldering fire around noon of the following day. The ruins attracted sightseers like these, and there was no need to stop them if they kept to the streets.

The fire destroyed the Galbraith Bacon storehouse and stables, and the entire block bordered by Railroad and Elliott avenues and Battery and Wall streets. It also gutted the brick Glenorchy Hotel on Western Avenue, four apartment houses, two restaurants, a hardware store and much else.