Safeco Plaza at 1001 Fourth Avenue (northwest corner of Madison Street) is on the former site of the Lincoln Hotel. To take this photo, I am standing with my back to the downtown Seattle Public Library, looking across Fourth Avenue.
A few minutes after midnight on April 7, 1920, the lights began to blink and go out at the Lincoln Hotel on Fourth & Madison Streets in downtown Seattle. The desk clerk and the night watchmen smelled smoke, and they began telephoning the rooms and going along the hallways to rouse guests to flee the fire. But before they could get very far, the heat and smoke of the rapidly-spreading fire forced them to leave the building, and they watched as flames shot up the central courtyard and began to consume the upper floors. There were more than 300 people staying in the hotel.
When the fire department arrived there was little they could do to save the building, as the streams of water directed at the fire were not enough to quench the raging inferno. Firemen commenced to rescue guests who were still inside the hotel.
This photo taken in 1906 shows the foundations being laid for the Seattle Public Library. Looking westward across Fourth Avenue we see the Lincoln Hotel. Photo courtesy of Seattle Public Library Historic Photos Collection.
As crowds watched from the sidewalk, Fireman Carl R. Dooley climbed a fire department ladder as far as it would go, up the exterior wall to the fifth floor of the hotel. Then Dooley continued climbing up by using an extension pole called a pompier or hook ladder, to reach a woman who was frantically waving for help out of a seventh-floor window.
Dooley lowered the woman with ropes to Police Officer Phil McNamee, a former fireman, who pulled her in through a fifth floor window. Then Dooley climbed back down himself. Fireman Dooley and Patrolman McNamee received commendations from the Mayor of Seattle for their heroism on the day of the Lincoln Hotel fire, having rescued a number of people.
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