Fancy fictionalized version of late 19th century underground Seattle

There is an earlier post on the Seattle underground scenes in THE NIGHT STRANGLER to which I participated. Here is my own comment.

I took the Underground Seattle Tour twice, more than a decade separating each one. The tour guide showed the tour group more on the first tour than on the second one I took part in more than ten years later. It may have been a safety issue as the conditions are very old and decrepit down there.

I wish I had brought along a strong flashlight on the first tour. We passed by a partially boarded-up opening and when you looked through or through the adjacent old windows, you could actually look down an old darkened street, boarded-up, late 19th century businesses on both sides of the street. It was so dark, though, that you couldn't see far down the street until it was just pitch black. I wish there had been lights set inside to illuminate down the street. Yes, it is kind of eerie.

The old Seattle underground is but around 135 years old and it looks ancient. It's a wonder it doesn't collapse. The city engineers did their job long ago to ensure that doesn't happen. Original Seattle had been built on the lowlands that were almost sea-level. When the tide came in the residents' toilets backed-up. Not just that, it was simply a public unhealthy situation. Engineer proposed an astonishing solution. In the wake of the great Seattle downtown fire, take advantage of the post-fire and rebuilt Seattle one level higher, that is, on top of the original streets. Some 14 original city blocks were covered by the new higher street.

The movie offered up a fictionalized version of the Seattle Underground. I don't recall any of the actual Seattle Underground filmed for the movie. Instead the film director rented out the Los Angeles downtown Bradbury building and installed all sorts of late 19th century props and movable trees and bushes, which could not have grown in the absence of sunlight. Obvious electric lights were strategically located and hidden by props and vegetation in order to provide some form of illumination for the underground. This lighting technique is very common in movies where the storyline predates electrical lights. I just saw the old movie, "Zulu Dawn", where a strong spotlight was concealed behind a wagon in order to illuminate the set showing soldiers marching off into the darkness. You were supposed to assume it was a gaslight or torchlight in the background. All in all, it was very effective. I'm certain there's old, abandoned stores and buildings in Old Underground Seattle, but it would be too far in the 14 blocks and would be too risky and dangerous to set up a film site.