This room is where the tour began. The whole point is--when the brick buildings were rebuilt on the same level as the original wooden buildings and the city fathers wanted to raise the street level, they built 8-16 foot tall retaining walls around the blocks of rebuilt buildings, with sidewalk spaces, then backfilled in for the new streets. This created a new problem--getting from block to block. OK, climb a ladder up the wall, cross the street, climb down to the next block. NOT TOO practical, yes? So, the first floor became the basement first floor and the 2nd became the street level first--clear??--hope so. Cause we[ in the tour] walked around all these buildings, under the sidewalks, seeing and hearing this part of Seattle's history.