Reading the scale
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008A recent afternoon walk around Capitol Hill led me from Volunteer Park down 14th.
Along the way I saw this single family fantasy:
Beautiful bricks!
Then not to far down the road yet another study in brick:
This is the Fairhome. Unfortunately there is no vacancy.
The Fairhome is a solid building that recalls a time when apartment buildings looked like they were built to last forever.
If we peek around the corner of the Fairhome we see:
Gasp! Single family!
And across the street are some great looking old homes.
Solid Seattle houses.
And just to the south is this little multifamily number:
Kid on bicycle not included.
And a bit further south, a duplex.
Scale (as in “this project is out of scale with our neighborhood”) is often used to reject multifamily in and around single family neighborhoods. This neighborhood came together when suburbs were not common and when expectations about scale were different. Look at the stark contrast in scale on 14th and Mercer:
This is a Seattle Housing Authority property.
Talk about out of scale! A high rise of low-income housing?
But this neighborhood — old and new, wealthy, middle class and poor–seems to be working.
The mix is what we want in Seattle’s housing future. There isn’t a clear line or barrier between types of housing but a gradual progression of types of housing, income materials and style. This looks like it happened “organically” but couldn’t we plan the same kind of integration? Who wouldn’t want to live in any unit or house between the Park and John?
