Tour Gets to the Bottom of Seattle’s Bawdy Past

It’s not Disneyland, to be sure, but what it lacks in cuddly cuteness it makes up for with broken bottles, cobwebs and cockroaches. One newspaper called it, “the only truly tacky tour in the United States.”

Welcome to the Seattle underground.

On Bill Speidel’s beneath-the-streets tour, visitors can view the ruins of the hotels, brothels, gambling and opium dens, livery stables and storefronts that are the bedrock upon which present-day Seattle is built.

So far about 2 million people have dropped below Pioneer Square after viewing what above is billed as Seattle’s most historic and friendly neighborhood.

It begins at Doc Maynard’s Public House at First Avenue and James Street, facing Pioneer Square Park. Doc Maynard’s saloon, which dates from 1892, recently was renovated and now houses bistros and antique shops.

Here, tour participants listen to guides tell tales of Seattle’s often humorous and bawdy past. The guides’ irreverent look at civic history begins with the arrival of Arthur Denny and other founders in 1851.

Among the tidbits they unearth:

--The 1886 census showed that more than 10% of the city’s residents were listed as “seamstress.” Oddly, the “seamstresses” all lived and worked within a three-block area that didn’t have a single sewing machine.

As a result, the “seamstresses” were licensed and taxed, as were the city’s gamblers. In 1888 more than three-quarters of the city’s revenue came from those taxes.

--The term “skid row” was coined in Seattle. Actually “skid road,” the term referred to the path down which logs were dragged, pushed and rolled on their way to the sawmills.

--Old Seattle’s roads were once the city’s shame. The potholes were of enormous size and number, and the city made national headlines in the late 1870s when a child drowned in “the great Jackson Street chuckhole,” a yawning cavity that was 18 by 12 feet, and nearly nine feet deep.

After the briefing, tour participants step down into the underground city.

“The most exciting tours of the day are the first and the last,” said Ron Lamb, one of the guides. “If visitors are going to see rats and crawlies down here, that’s when they’re likely to be out.”

In the wake of a disastrous fire in 1889, the new city was simply built atop the old and the condemned buildings became the center of vice.

“Gamblers, hookers, escaped convicts all moved to the underground,” Lamb said. “Then conditions got so bad, even they couldn’t take it.”

For decades the underground was deserted. Now more than 120,000 people take the tour each year.

“The street people moved in. They lived here for several years,” Lamb said. “Finally, they decided it wasn’t fit for human habitation.

“Since nobody else wants to come down here, we just bring the tourists. They seem to like it.”

Tours of 80 to 90 minutes are conducted 360 days a year along and under the sidewalks of Pioneer Square. No tours are offered Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Adult admission is $4, students and seniors $3.25, children $2. Tours leave several times a day, beginning at 10 a.m. Times vary. Reservations are necessary. Call (206) 682-4646. Allow 90 minutes for the complete tour. The tour is not wheelchair accessible and is not for people who have serious walking disabilities.

Each tour is limited to 200 people, who should wear comfortable walking shoes.

Doc Maynard’s Public House, a combination bar and sandwich restaurant, serves continental breakfasts, lunches and snacks. On weekends it features music and dancing.

It also runs a gift shop and museum, where one can buy such items as gummy-rat candy and rat T-shirts.