December 8, 2003

Bassetti unveils design for church in an office tower

Image courtesy of Bassetti Architects The First United Methodist Church will be located at the base of an office building at Fifth and Columbia.

Bassetti Architects unveiled a preliminary design last week for First United Methodist Church.

The 95-year-old church, a domed landmark in downtown Seattle at 811 Fifth Ave., is slated to be torn down to make way for a 37-story office building that will include a new home for the church.

The unlikely church-and-office combo would become the world's fourth such structure, said Marilyn Brockman, a principal at Bassetti. The others are in Denver, Hong Kong and New York.

The Seneca Group, which is managing the project for the church, hired architect Michael Whalen to draw up plans for the office tower. The church intends to sell its half-block site to a developer in exchange for space in the new office building.

Despite the church's historic value, its parishioners are looking forward to replacing the building, which needs costly repairs and is difficult for elderly and disabled parishioners to negotiate.

The new church would hold about 45,000 square feet. The existing church includes a 40,000-square-foot sanctuary and another 30,000 square feet of administrative space on a 30,720-square-foot site.

Brockman said Bassetti's design for the church will give it an identity separate from the office tower. Rather than integrate the church directly into the tower, it will instead sit on the tower's south side, in a four-story structure.

A stained-glass cross and religious inscriptions on the exterior walls will help express the building's religious identity. A sweeping wall at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Columbia Street is designed to welcome people into the building.

But aside from the stained glass, few reminders of the old church will remain.

"We're not going to tie to the past visually," Brockman said. The church wants to present a forward-looking version of itself as a "viable, modern member of the community."

A top-floor sanctuary and rooftop garden will provide visual interest for occupants of the office tower.

"We were making sure that the people in all those millions of square feet had something to look down at," Brockman said.

The office tower is slated to hold approximately 590,000 square feet. Six to eight levels underground will house 538 parking spaces.

Other features of the church include an acoustically superior sanctuary for musical performances, and community space for meetings, performing arts groups and social services offices.

Brockman said her trip to New York's 59-story Citigroup Center, which houses St. Peter's Lutheran Church, didn't have much influence on Bassetti's design.

"It's a different site," she said, contrasting the complex's large footprint and level grade to the Seattle site's much smaller area (it shares the block with the Rainier Club) and steep slope.

Brockman said the church does not have a schedule to begin construction. For now, it's waiting for the office market to rebound.