The scaffolding around Pioneer Square's Metropole Building (423 2nd Ave Ext S) has just been removed. This building has been boarded up for over 15 years, and is the site of one of the craziest stories in Seattle history. 120 years ago a disgraced ex-police chief ambushed a casino owner in front of this building, firing two point-blank shotgun blasts which both missed. The casino owner and his brother then turned around and practicely beat the ex police chief to death with his own gun before shooting him with a different gun.

For those more interested in the present, here are more details about the upcoming redevelopment plans for this site.

History Link: Seattle's newly resigned police chief William Meredith is killed in a sensational shootout in Seattle on June 25, 1901

William Meredith met his future nemesis John Considine 12 years earlier. Considine was the owner of several "box houses" (a combination casino/ saloon/ theater/ bordello with booths where the waitress performed "personal services" for the customers) in Spokane and Seattle. Meredith worked in one of these establishments and was originally good friends with his employer Considine.  

Years later, Meredith was appointed Seattle police chief and began ordering raids on Considine's casinos and demanding a $500 bribe for protection. He took the bribe but then continued the raids anyway, so Considine reported his corruption to City Hall leading Meredith to resign in disgrace.

The day after losing his job, the ex police chief hunted down the casino owner to get revenge. He found him on the corner of Yesler & 2nd Ave joking about the scandal with his brother and another cop who also has a grudge with the ex chief.

Ex Police Chief Meredith snuck up on them and fired a shot gun at the back of Considine's head from 2 feet away but somehow missed the casino owner who ran into a drug store (now the Metropole Building).

Meredith chased him inside and fired a 2nd shotgun blast. But someone knocked his arm as he pulled the trigger so he missed again, grazing Considine and hitting a random bystander drinking sarsaparilla.

He then cornered the casino owner in the back of the store, but Comsidine turned around and tackled him. Considine's brother Tom grabbed the ex police chief's pistol (he had multiple guns) and repeatedly smashed it into Meredith's skull fracturing it in two places. 

Actual police officers rushed in and broke up the fight, but Tom Considine grabbed one of the cop's guns and pointed it at the officers yelling "Stand back, you son's of bitches!" 

John Considine pushed aside the officers holding him and took out his own pistol shooting the ex police chief twice and puncturing his heart, liver, and lung. Meredith's clothes also caught fire from the heat of the gun shots. 

The blazing and bleeding ex police chief lunged at (or perhaps just fell towards) the casino owner who shot him a 3rd time in the neck, finally killing him.

The Considine brothers were tried for murder and acquitted. John Considine later went straight and had a very successful career in vaudeville.

*Update - Edited to clarify some inaccuracies. Thanks u/SirRatcha for the clarification!

Thanks to Brad Holden, local Seattle Historian who knows a ton about Prohibition, Roy Olmstead, Al Hubbard and the places they drank, for the very kind book review over on Instagram. Here is the link.

Celebrate today by lifting a glass to the 21st Amendment, which, on Dec. 5, 1933, repealed the 18th Amendment & Prohibition! The 18thA is the only amendment to the Constitution ever repealed.

Elise Olmstead in Radio Digest

Elise Olmstead, with her famous bootlegging husband Roy Olmstead and young inventor Al Hubbard built the first 1000W radio station in Seattle in 1924. Elise, unconventionally, was the station manager. She was an innovator and brought live orchestra music to the airwaves from the Hotel Butler's ballroom. As "Aunt Vivian," she read children's bedtime stories each evening over the air.

She saw the station as Roy's way back to respectability and an excape from the rum running business. But she was too late. The feds raided the Olmstead home in November 1924 and that was the beginning of the end of Roy's illicit liquor empire. To Elise's great disappointment, Roy leased and then sold the station and equipment and the new station ultimately became KOMO, which is alive and broadcasting today.

You can read more in my book Elise Olmstead, The Myth and Mystery of Seattle's "Queen of the Bootleggers."
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DN16M3MH

Just published - the real story of Elise Olmstead, wife of Seattle's "Gentleman Bootlegger," including some never before seen photographs of Roy, Elise, and the Olmstead Mount Baker home, available on Amazon.

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I'm looking for a particular image or video of the bumper (I think it was the bumper) of Subculture Joe's pickup truck that he abandoned next to Westlake Mall in 1996 with The Heart of Seattle sculpture in its bed. The phrase, written by kids he had worked with said something about the group and ended with, "the bomb". "Bomb" in that context means, of course, the good or cool thing they were talking about (him or his truck, I've heard both).

Then the cops pigs freaked out and shut down that part of downtown and then the media lost its shit, then the government lost its shit, and they all dogpiled on Joe. I was not involved, I only paid attention, and it was horrific to see so many commentators dumping on him for causing this panic that had actually clearly been caused by the cops pigs.

I was downtown that day, just a few blocks away and I remember people leaving for food and coming back into the building mentioning the truck, well before the police pig freakout and lockdown. There were cops pigs standing next to it chatting, long before anyone thought to notice the sentence scrawled on the bumper that included the words, "the bomb."

I remember seeing very early on, a picture or video on the local news that showed the phrase in context, and then I remember clearly never seeing the context again, only the one word "bomb" with everything else cropped out. It seemed a clear move to keep it sensational by refusing to provide context.

I got distracted by life and I never learned the tragedy of his mental health crisis in jail, that changed him. I didn't learn that he converted to christianity, nor that he had been killed by a train in Mississippi with no witnesses. I'm even sadder now. That just looks to me like yet another poor sucker who got stomped on by the full weight of the government and media manipulation and died because of it. Another Aaron Swartz maybe. It sickens me that they can just fuck with people like that.

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I attended an underground Seattle tour today and they mentioned that rock and granite from the Cascades we brought in to help with the infrastructure rebuild. I don't recall any train racks laid east west. Does anyone know how this was done? I find it hard to believe they did barges down the Columbia, to the Pacific to the Sound to do this.

I'm in Canada so I don't have local access. I've contacted Seafair, as well as the Museum of History and Industry, and neither could tell me.

I'm just trying to find out the dates of the Seattle Seafair for 1959. Was it Aug 1 - 10?

Does anyone here have any info?

Thanks.