History: Walled In

Of the millions of people who drive on Alaskan Way and stroll the waterfront every year, most have no idea that they’re able to do so thanks to a man-made seawall. Erected in 1936, the seawall keeps the tide from rising all the way to Western Avenue and runs from Pioneer Square north to Myrtle Edwards Park. Along much of its length it is about 12 feet high. Along the central waterfront, north of Madison Street, however, the beach slopes steeply in places, and the wall climbs to about 40 feet high.

Just as the future of the waterfront is subject to contentious debate today, city leaders a century ago also struggled to find a way to keep the waterfront both vibrant and safe. The seawall solution created solid ground where there had been shifting sands, but that original structure—which made today’s waterfront possible—is swiftly deteriorating and in dire need of replacing.

Prior to the completion of the seawall, the buildings and streets on the central waterfront (west of Western Avenue) perched on pilings in the water. Railroads, too, relied on piers, their tracks running on trestles above the water (where Alaskan Way is today). The elevated waterfront gave wagons, trucks and trains a level place to travel and people a place to work, but the tide continued to come and go daily underneath these thoroughfares and buildings. The planked streets and trestles required constant upkeep as the untreated wood deteriorated and the pilings succumbed to teredos and gribbles—marine organisms that chew through underwater wooden structures. 

But the commerce served by the elevated waterfront outweighed any maintenance inconvenience. Without it, there was precious little level ground along Elliott Bay—before engineers modified the landscape to what we see today, tidelands stretched in an arc from the mouth of the Duwamish River inland to Beacon Hill and around to where King Street Station currently sits. To the north of Piner’s Point (now Pioneer Square), the beach met a steep bluff all the way to Interbay. 

In the late 19th century, railroad builders  constructed trestles from the mouth of the Duwamish River to Piner’s Point and then northward, parallel to Western Avenue but offshore. In 1887, the Seattle City Council named this area Railroad Avenue. As the city grew, particularly after 1897, when Seattle became a supply depot for the Klondike Gold Rush, so did the number of railroad lines. By the early 20th century, nine sets of tracks ran along Railroad Avenue. The area between Western and Railroad avenues filled with buildings and streets, all constructed on pilings. 

Although the pilings served a purpose, early on they were recognized as a less than ideal solution. A 1908 editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer lamented, “There, and there alone, are the makeshifts of a pioneer era permitted to remain. Instead of permanent concrete docks there are temporary wharves on piling, rapidly crumbling under the ravages of the teredo.” The editors called on the city to build a seawall to meet the port’s needs. While officials were well aware of the weakened pilings, they didn’t know about the other urgent issue incubating beneath the planks.