Drive By History Extra Ep 1.03 Seattle's Smith Tower

One day after Seattle's Great Fire of 1889 reduced 116 acres to rubble, a Wisconsin land speculator named James Clise stepped off a train and saw opportunity where others saw ashes. His timing would set off a chain of events leading to a Syracuse typewriter tycoon, a father-son rivalry with a competing developer, and a race to build higher than anyone could catch up to "in his lifetime." The result? The Smith Tower — the tallest building west of the Mississippi when it opened on July 4th, 1914, and still standing at Second Avenue and Yesler Way today. In this Drive By History Extra, we dig into the civic reinvention behind one of Seattle's most iconic landmarks — from the Klondike Gold Rush to a deathbed commission for a tower its builder would never see finished.