After abandoning ' New York Alki ' , the Denny Party moved across the then named Duwamish Bay in April 1852 to a low level marsh situated with a safe deep water harbor roughly located in the city 's Pioneer Square district where they named their new frontier ' Duwamps ' . In the late 1850s , present day Downtown Seattle became the main residential outskirts of the city . But after the Great Seattle Fire , the business district was moved here . Because of the fire the city had to be built at a much higher elevation to avoid past drainage problems and regraded some of the city 's hills starting somewhere around 1876 . Since that time the area had been filled with newly established jobs . Seattle became an industrial hub in 1897 when the Klondike Gold Rush made the city a gateway for discovering gold . Starting in the late 1960s , Downtown has been being filled with dozens of skyscrapers and most famously for changing the Seattle skyline , the Columbia Center in 1985
Great Seattle Fire
Great Seattle Fire
Downtown Seattle