The Panic of 1893, a nationwide economic crash, had a chilling effect upon Seattle. Historian Thomas Prosch wrote that Seattle businesses, banks manufacturers and even churches closed down and went out of business due to lack of money to operate. Rents went down so low that property owners could not make enough profit to pay their mortgages, and so they lost their holdings. Ten years later, in a court case in 1903, B. F. Day of the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle testified that in 1893 he had been in “financial embarrassment” and he had been left with nothing but his own house. At that time he had put title to some of the land he owned into the names of other people so that the properties would not be taken from him by creditors.
The Fremont neighborhood is on the north side of the ship canal. Here we are standing on the Fremont side, looking east toward the Fremont Bridge. Photo by Valarie.
B.F. Day had come to Seattle in 1880 at age 45 and he quickly became involved in the life of his newly-adopted city. He worked in real estate and served one term on Seattle City Council before moving out of the city limits. As shown in lists of construction permits of 1888-1889, B.F. Day and his wife Frances built a big house where they had land holdings in Fremont, a suburb of Seattle.
The history of the Fremont neighborhood closely parallels the ups and downs of Seattle itself. In Part Two of the story of B.F. Day, we will read how his life was impacted by the economic crash of 1893.
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middle of the camp. It looked as a sign of hope in a place through which thousands of the world homeless journey, day and night, on their way to a hopefully better place and better future.
Wedgwood in Seattle History 