I went to Olympia about a year ago, to Evergreen State College, for my son's 20th birthday, but also spent some time in Seattle with an old college buddy, who showed me "Underground Seattle."

 

First, flying into Seattle ...

 

... where a rainbow points to a pot o' gold atop the Space Needle

 

Pioneer Square, above the old city

 

The underground city is even older than this stuff

 

Vintage barroom, where the tour starts

 

After the great Seattle fire of 1887 burned 25 blocks of the original Seattle mudflats (where wastewater from the early timber sewers on the hillsides flushed down and out of the commodes of those living in the lowlands at high tide), city fathers (who had a symbiotic relationship with the city madames) decided to raise the streets -- filling between retaining walls, and building new sidewalks as a roof over the old passages so the second stories of surviving buildings became the ground floors. Some furnishings of those long-abandoned first floors remain. These changes came just in time for the 1897 Yukon Gold Rush, when 100,000 new residents turned the old port town into a bawdy big-city jumping-off point for golddiggers.

 

Skylight, looking up from the old, lower-level sidewalks, to the new

 

Skylight, looking down from the new, upper-level sidewalks, to the old

 

Alley awaiting us underground tourists as we climbed the stairs back up

 

Looking up James Street from Pioneer Square, past what locals call the "sinking ship garage" (right) on the site of the former landmark five-story, flatiron Hotel Seattle, demolished in the 1960s

 

More shots from the Pioneer Square area, home of the original "skid row" -- the "skid road" where workers skidded the timbers logged by loggers

 

Smith Tower, 1914, Seattle's first skyscraper

 

A sampling of neat old buildings, streetscapes, steep slopes and angles typical of Seattle's varied terrain

 

Modernist Seahawks stadium sticking out like a sore thumb amid more-traditional architecture

 

Stairs or art on a steep slope?

 

My buddy decided I couldn't leave his adopted city without being photographed at the site of such a historic bawdy house

 

Can you spot the mannekin?

 

Hello, Space Needle!

 

I've got a sinking feeling the sinking ship replaced a great sunken hotel

 

The Needle follows you around Seattle like the eyes of of a man in a painting above a fireplace in a dark, gothic mansion

 

For a few years, it seemed nobody on UO could post a Seattle thread without the obligatory pic of the latest snark or pun or attraction on the marquee of the Lusty Lady. Alas, she lusts no more

 

The late, great Seattle Post-Intelligencer now exists only online -- increasingly, my journalist buddy tells me, more tabloid than serious. At least one of the nation's greatest newspaper signs still remains

 

Great newsstand near UW

 

Great brewpub down the  street

 

Awaiting my light-rail chariot to Sea-Tac

 

Big Time Brewery!  One of my favorite places!  I miss Seattle.  For such a young city it manages to have so much character and a colorful history.

Your photos give us yet another dimension of the Seattle downtown.  Much appreciated, UrbanSurfin!

Seattle has one of the better downtowns in America and you've shown that.