Built on the tidal flats of the Washington's Puget Sound, Seattle's old city that was lost in the "Great Fire of 1889", had many problems among them where a ground that was so saturated with water that a horse could sink to his stomach! In those early days there were no doubt lots of adversities to overcome but the city built on a tidal flat had an extraordinary explosive plumbing problem with their toilets! The city was built so low that during the incoming high tide the draining sewage would reverse it's direction and back up through plumbing and shooting up out of toilets when any unwitting poor soul went pull the chain to flush.
Just imagine their shock on a cold winters night, or the odor on a hot summer day.
Plumbing is meant to control health problems, their situation in that day no doubt exacerbated it.
In order to combat this intolerable situation people started getting creative with placement of their toilets raising them on platforms as high fifteen feet! How would you like to have climb a latter to get to the toilet, Hopefully some of these folks had the means to build stairs.
Finally the problem had to be handled as a city as a whole and the streets where raised a story higher to rise above this explosive troubles.
Their new solution presented it own problems, to begin with they raised the streets but not the side walks.
So this meant using ladders to go from the sidewalk to the street.
In time the sidewalks where covered and raised to street level which alleviated problems created by having horses a story above pedestrians, Probably necessitating the need for umbrella's even when it wasn't raining.
Next time you are on your way to the bathroom think about those hardy folks in Seattle's past and thank modern Seattle plumbers for plumbing being a fairly mundane subject compared to those explosive times!