Glue pot boils over in a basement; 25 blocks of Seattle are gone by morning

Seattle in the summer of 1889 was a timber town built on timber's terms — nearly every structure wood-framed, the streets laid over a flood-prone shoreline barely above sea level, the water mains too narrow for the hydrants that tapped them. At 2:20 p.m. on June 6, a 24-year-old Swedish carpenter named John Back was heating glue over a gasoline fire in the basement of the Pontius Building when the pot boiled over, igniting a floor covered in wood chips and turpentine. By morning, 25 city blocks were gone, including four wharves and the railroad terminals — total losses estimated at nearly $20 million, roughly $717 million today. Seattle chose to rebuild immediately, raised the street level 20 feet, replaced wood with brick and stone, and within a year had added nearly 40,000 residents to become the largest city in the newly admitted state of Washington…