The lecture starts at 5:30 p.m. tonight (July 1) at the First United Methodist Church Sanctuary at 811 Fifth Ave. It’s free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by Daniels Development.

MacIntosh was a preservation advocate for Historic Seattle and was deputy director of Historylink. org, the online encyclopedia of Seattle and Washington history.

I went to his lecture Thursday and spoke to him Friday morning. He had been out with his camera, wandering First Hill and downtown and snapping photos of older blocks and newer developments. He said Seattle has really changed in the 20 years he’s been watching it.

“I’ve loved (Seattle) because of its grittiness and that’s rapidly disappearing,” he said.

He said he was also surprised we don’t have more historic districts in our great, historic town. Rypkema believes historic preservation is key to economic development but has a special affinity for historic districts. Unlike one historic building, where preservation can be seen as an economic burden on a building owner, he said, a district sees all its values rise.

He said rehabbing a historic building is the greenest construction there is and said there is no function in today’s world that couldn’t happily be housed in yesterday’s building. He said churches, universities and hospitals are the worst at claiming they need to raze historic buildings to suit their modern needs.

“Developers are often painted as the villains in neighborhoods but the biggest villains in neighborhoods are churches hospitals and universities,” he said Friday. “They screw up more neighborhoods than anyone else in the country.”

At the Thursday lecture at Wallingford’s lovely Good Shepherd Center, Rypkema said historic districts also: have stabler prices and are better equipped to ride out economic downturns, and draw better tourists and do a better job overall at supporting the local economy than new construction (because more money goes to workers than materials, and then the workers spend that cash locally).

Seattle has seven historic districts: Ballard Avenue, Columbia City, Fort Lawton, Harvard-Belmont, the International District, Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square. For comparison, Portland has 13 historic districts and seven conservation districts.

Read the entire text of Rypkema’s lecture for yourself, and read his own blog about his recent trips to Seattle and Portland.

She remembers taking the ferry from Madison Park to Kirkland for her first reporting job, and said the streetcars that criss-crossed the city cost a nickel each. Bellevue was a meadow, she said, while Kirkland was a vibrant little town.

Gray worked for Architecture West for about 20 years and led Relta Gray Associates for nearly 30 years. She also founded Environmental Design West and edited Northwest Architect.

I spoke to Relta about how today’s Seattle compares with that town of old and about her memories of earlier Seattle architects. Here’s a selection from our conversation.

Relta Gray

Q. How has downtown changed?
A. To me, it seems like when I go downtown I begin to feel like I’m in New York or Chicago. I do like the energy of going downtown and feeling people around, but if feels like we’re taking away the whole character of the Northwest with the way they’re putting all these high-rises up and crowding it all together and taking down some of the little stores and things you always enjoyed.

Q. What did “Western architecture” mean when you first wrote about it?
A. When I was doing that, we were just getting to know some of the Western architects. I remember Frank Gehry, when he first got started we did this little feature on him and I was astounded at his vision at the time. It was just sort of an out-there thing.

Q. What about Northwest architecture?
A. Here in the Northwest, we’re blessed with so much open space and we have a lot of water, and we had trees and I think that really played into whatever design we had. We had a very good group here who also were very concerned about the community and sort of keeping the Northwest aura. They worked on keeping the open space and allowing for gray days, and adapting and utilizing what we had for heat and power and letting a lot of light in. What really makes it Northwest is where we live and the views we have.

Q. Who were some memorable local architects?
A. (Fred) Bassetti was really a forward-seeing architect. Locally, I thought Victor Steinbrueck was great because he was concerned about the outdoors. Al Bumgardner, when he first came to Seattle, he was into residential architecture, but then he built churches and schools and bigger buildings. He was very open to where buildings were going to be located and how it would affect other areas.

Q. Do you like the new streetcar?
A. I use public transportation a lot. I remember when we had streetcars all around Seattle and you rode on them for a nickel. There’s so many people now and I think we need public transit but I think the streetcars are a little cumbersome. Buses can go into a lot of places streetcars can’t. I’m all for things like Sound Transit. I’d like to see it developed so we could get to the Eastside more easily.

Q. How has the Eastside changed?
A. Bellevue was a big meadow pasture. A friend’s dad owned 20 acres of farmland that became Bellevue Square. Kirkland was kind of a bustling little town even then. Kirkland had more of an advantage until they put I-405 through there. At the time you could walk anyplace and get anything you needed over in Kirkland.

Gray recently retired from design and construction editing, turning her attention to The Independent Elderly, a 62-page guide on how friends and family can help the elderly maintain their independence as they age. Read more of our conversation here (subscription only).

The Artic's signature Walruses

(Quick, before you click the link above, name the architect. Hint: He also designed the old King County Courthouse.)

The Arctic Club Hotel will celebrate its grand opening in May, according to the Web site for Summit Hotels & Resorts. Summit bought the walrus-adorned historic building from the city in 2005 for $5.1 million. Check out a slide show of rooms and more here.

The city purchased the Arctic and the Alaska Building in 1988 for more than twice their 2005 selling price.

Summit has been busy converting the 1916 social club turned office building into an upscale hotel. The landmark building at Third and Cherry needed a full seismic upgrade in addition to repairs and refurbishments.

It’s been fun to see the building getting spruced up for its new purpose. Check out the room design here, and get a glimpse on the left of the refurbished ceiling and chandelier.

The building is no longer limited to those who made it big in the Alaskan Gold Rush, but rooms start at about $250 a night.

(Fun fact, from Jeffrey Ochsner‘s “Shaping Seattle Architecture:” The Arctic Building’s Architect, Augustus Warren Gould, had no academic training and transferred from the contracting business to architecture in the late 1890s.)