ABSTRACT
Pioneer Square is not actually a “square” but a district within Seattle with two primary urban spaces: the triangular Pioneer Place Park and Occidental Park. As its name implies, it is the area settled by pioneers in the mid-nineteenth century and established as the new city’s industrial and shipping base. A young city compared to many of the cities illustrated in this collection, Seattle was founded in 1852 on relatively level waterfront land and quickly became a center of trade and finances in America’s northwest. In 1889, the area was devastated by a fire but rebuilt with brick commercial buildings. The area’s zenith was at the beginning of the twentieth century following the Alaskan gold rush, which resulted in an influx of people and money that inaugurated a commercial building boom, docks, warehouses and two rail stations: the King Street station built in 1906 and Union Station built in 1911 (Miles 1989: 8).
