
The <a href="http://www.seattle.com/financial/">financial district</a> had it the worst, apparently.  Every time the tide came in, the whole area would flood.  As bad as that sounds, it's even worse when you consider that a large group of humans clustered together for many hours every day will produce a large amount of... well, organic byproducts.  There were of course privies for use, but in those days a privy was a shack over a hole in the ground.  Thus the privies has this distressing tendency to flood 