The Yesler-Leary Building was designed by Seattle's principal pre-1889 "Great Fire" architect, William E. Boone. The cost of raising this Victorian ornament was, for the time, a whopping $100,000.

This photograph was recorded sometime between late December 1883, when the planks evident on Mill Street (Yesler Way) were first laid, and September 1884, when the horse trolley first passed by on rails not yet part of this street scene. The condition before planking is indicated in a Dec. 20, 1883, news story. "In attempting to cross Mill Street yesterday from the Post Office," (the next structure on Mill Street to the left of the Yesler-Leary Building), "a woman came near drowning. She sank deeper than we care to describe, and only succeeded in saving herself, with dreadfully soiled skirts, after great difficulty."

The utility poles seen here are nearly new. Telephone service began this year. Street numbering also began in 1883, possibly because 600 homes were added to Seattle that decidedly booming year. The cosmopolitan tone of this growth is suggested by the appearance in '83 of Die Puget Sound Post, the first locally published non-English newspaper.