Queen Anne Connection: The Steam Plant
In the conversations about the Counterbalance and its construction in 1902 by the Seattle Electric Railway, there is little talk about the electricity that powered the line and the company that built the facilities that generated it. While it remains somewhat speculative, there is a good chance that after 1907, when the Seattle Electric Company’s Georgetown Steam Plant finally came on line, some of the electricity powering the streetcars on the Counterbalance and the five other Queen Anne lines came in part from that pioneering steam plant. There is no doubt though that the Seattle Electric Railway and the Seattle Electric Company were both part of Boston-based Stone and Webster, a monopolistic transit engineering firm with branches nationwide. …Continue reading “The Powerful Georgetown”
