evidence: Less than an hour and a half after the fire's start, every building on both sides of Front Street between Madison and Columbia was ablaze, and by 5 p.m. the flames had set alight Toklas, Singerman & Co.'s San Francisco Store. An imposing brick building, it stood on the southwest corner of Front Street and Columbia. Described as a "majestic bookend for a row of new masonry retail/office blocks, built in the fashionable Italianate Style ..." ("Toklas, Singerman and Company, Store #4"), it was the northern anchor of the city's only unbroken line of brick and stone structures, which extended south along the west side of Front Street from Columbia to Yesler Avenue (today's Yesler Way). Among the other buildings in the row were those housing the Union Block, Merchants National Bank, First National Bank, Seattle Land Company, Safe Deposit, Stewart & Holmes Drug Co., Gordon Hardware, and Seattle Hardware. [...] Almost every foot of the waterfront, north and south, was occupied by either a wooden building or storage lots filled with lumber and other flammables. Racing underneath all this, the flames moved north to as far as University Street, where they were halted by excavations for two planned buildings and the heroic efforts of a bucket brigade. This was as far north as the fire would get.