What You Didn't Know About Seattle

Kelly Kang | Managing Broker | Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty

Seattle has a reputation it’s mostly earned — rain, coffee, tech money, mountains. But the city has a richer, stranger, and more layered character than its clichés suggest. Here’s a handful of things that might surprise you.

The city is literally built on top of itself.

After the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 leveled 25 blocks of the central business district, the city rebuilt — but it raised the street grade by one to two stories above the original ground level. The old storefronts, sidewalks, and doorways still exist underground, and you can walk through them on the famous Seattle Underground Tour. When your clients ask why Pioneer Square feels architecturally distinct, this is the answer. The neighborhood they’re seeing is the second version.

It gets less rain than New York, Houston, and Atlanta.

Seattle averages about 37 inches of rain per year — compared to 47 in New York, 52 in Houston, and roughly 51 in Orlando. What Seattle actually has is overcast days — gray skies without much precipitation. The reputation for rain is largely a myth the locals have never bothered to correct, possibly because it keeps the population manageable.

Women Empowered Spotlight

Seattle elected the first female mayor of a major U.S. city — in 1926. Bertha Knight Landes won the Seattle mayoral race that year, served two years, and pushed hard for municipal reform at a time when city leadership was riddled with corruption. The city has a longer history of women in leadership than most people realize. Today, the Seattle Storm is owned by an all-women ownership group, and Washington State has produced some of the country’s most notable women in law, food, literature, and civic life.