August 3, 1994

STANDING THE TEST OF TIME: TEN SEATTLE BUILDINGS

BY CLAIR ENLOW

Journal A/E editor

Editor's note: This feature continues the AIA (American Institute of Architects)/Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce Project-of-the-Month series for the month of August. The historic buildings shown here were chosen in acknowledgment of the centennial year of AIA Seattle, which was founded in August, 1894.

They were selected by the author with the expert assistance of Denis Anderson, Lawrence Kriesman, Mary McCullough, Jeffrey Ochsner, Phillip Jacobson, Julie Kohler, John Nesholm and Roger Williams, all of whom have had recent experience selecting buildings for the architecture exhibit at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI): Blueprints: 100 Years of Seattle Architecture. Thomas Veith was also consulted.

The Blueprints exhibit, which also commemorates the AIA Centennial, is an unprecedented assembly of photographs, models and other architectural records for the education and enjoyment of the public. It was guest curated by Lawrence Kriesman and will run through September of 1995.

These buildings stand today as reminders of several generations of Seattle architecture. Their value has been realized and reappraised over time and their design has provided lasting enjoyment to owners, tenants and passers-by.

First to the sky

The Smith Tower

Yesler Way and Second Avenue

1914, Gaggin & Gaggin

The Smith Tower topped the skyline of Seattle for many years. Built by and named after the typewriter magnate to define the center of the city in 1914, it enjoyed a long reign as the tallest building west the Mississippi.

As a ``skyscraper,'' the 42-story building prefigures the post-modern skyscraper emphasis on vertical division, with a clearly discernable base, body and top.

It also retains the virtues of pre-curtainwall buildings. The structure is expressed in the windows -- all of which are operable by the occupants. Even the elevators are still operated by real people.

Pride of place

Franklin High School

3013 Mount Baker Boulevard South

1911, Edgar Blair

Edgar Blair, school architect for the City of Seattle, left an important legacy for the Mount Baker neighborhood and the young people of Seattle in the Franklin High School Building. Skillfully restored by Bassetti Norton Metler Rekevics to Beaux Arts splendor in 1991 and shorn of a disfiguring 1960s addition, Franklin High School presides once again over the Rainier Valley, the pride of students and the local community.

Franklin High School students joined community members to win back and keep their building, and they have been rewarded with a timeless landmark, restored and enhanced to exceed modern educational standards. Art works in and around the school enliven the institution.

Dressed for town

The Skinner Building

Fifth Avenue

from University to Union

1926 R.C. Reamer

The Skinner Building is perhaps best known by its glamorous tenant -- the Fifth Avenue Theater. In 1926, this Italian palazzo building, designed by R. C. Reamer in collaboration with J. L. Skoog, brought a smooth urbanity to the University Tract -- which had until then been dominated by flamboyant decoration as found in the Cobb Building and the Olympic Hotel. The Skinner Building still wears the soft tone of its Wilkeson sandstone very well.

In contrast, the exotic excess of the theater interior -- said to replicate traditional Chinese timber construction -- is suited to the excitement of the new age of motion pictures. Its renovation as a roadhouse stage in the early 1970s has only added to the excitement.

Motion and vigor

Seattle Tower

1218 Third Avenue

1928, Albertson, Wilson & Richardson

``The piers are conceived of as mounting and surmounting surges decreasing upward in motion and vigor, finally coming to rest against the block at the top of the story,'' begins A.H. Albertson in his description of the design of the Seattle Tower, often attributed to his partner, Joseph Wilson.

The Moderne design achieves a celebrated Northwest regionalism with its architectural metaphors for snowcapped peaks and forests. An early brochure states that ``one's office location will not be forgotten.'' The Seattle Tower, originally called the Northern Life Tower, continues to fulfill that promise.

Cathedral of books

Suzzallo Library

University of Washington

1923-27, Bebb & Gould

The Suzzallo Library set the Collegiate Gothic standard for all the buildings on the new University of Washington campus when it was built between 1923 and 1927. Based on a design by Bebb & Gould, its fanciful spikes have been rendered even more romantic by the stark modernism of Red Square.

The university's renewed commitment to the original campus plan and reavowed affection for the designs of the original buildings has influenced the design of buildings under the new campus plan.

The original

`jewel box'

Seattle Art Museum

Volunteer Park

1931-33, Carl Gould

The Seattle Art Museum, now reopening as the Seattle Asian Art Museum, was the first museum to incorporate the Moderne style. As such, it represented an important step for Seattle and for its architect Carl Gould, then head of the University of Washington's School of Architecture and designer of the Suzzallo Library and the Henry Art Gallery. In this achievement, he was assisted by a new member of his firm, Walter Wurdeman. Several iterations of the design capture the essence of the modern movement. The final design -- fluid, symmetrical, and largely devoid of decoration -- embodies Moderne, Beaux Arts Classicism, and geometric Modern.

Originally called the Art Institute of Seattle, it held the art treasures of the city for over 60 years, until a new ``jewel box'' was built for them downtown.

Resting peacefully in its park location, with interiors carefully redefined at the hands of Olson/Sundberg Architects, the museum design now provides a perfect setting for Asian art and a reminder of Seattle's historic link and trading destiny with the Pacific Rim.

The modern arrives

The Norton Building

801 Second Avenue

at Columbia Street

1959-Skidmore Owings & Merrill

The International Style arrived in downtown Seattle with the Norton Building in 1959. Architect Skidmore Owings Merrill had designed similar buildings in other cities, but this was the first of Seattle's aluminum and glass curtainwall towers. And despite the decline of many of its post-war cronies, the Norton Building has kept its corporate pride. The tower is suspended, in the best Modern tradition, over a glazed lobby and open courtyard. It all stands aloof from the street on a large, marble-clad base.

Structural innovations of the time allowed generous, column-free space in the Norton Building. The space planning advantages are still enjoyed by tenants.

Transcending

tradition

University Unitarian Church

6556 35th Avenue Northeast

1960, Paul Hayden Kirk

Before modernism made its architectural debut in downtown Seattle, several local architects were already redefining the stye on their own terms in small, innovative houses and institutional buildings. One of the best of these is Paul Hayden Kirk's University Unitarian Church. A delicate system of screens and expressed structure, rendered in wood and wedded to the surrounding landscaping, helped to bring the ``Northwest Style'' into the public eye. The sanctuary is lit by a very large clerestory that catches the morning light.

An enduring fantasy

Pacific Science Center

Seattle Center

1960-1964 NBBJ

with Minoru Yamasaki & Associates

After 30 years, the poster-perfect tracery of the Science Center against the Seattle sky seems more real than fantasy -- but no less exciting.

The Science Center, known as the Federal Science Pavilion during the days of the Century 21 Exhibition, shows Minoru Yamasaki at his exuberant best. He is also the designer of the IBM Building in Seattle, the World Trade Center in New York and the Rainier Tower in Seattle.

Corporate

regionalism

Weyerhaeuser Headquarters

East of I-5

at 348th Street Interchange

1971-Skidmore, Owings & Merrill;

Sasaki, Walker & Associates,

landscape architects

Since 1971, southbound travellers on I-5 have caught glimpses of a massive building nested so convincingly into the landscape that it seems to be part of it. The Weyerhaeuser corporate headquarters, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill -- in close collaboration with landscape architects Sasaki, Walker & Associates -- made history far beyond the regional Northwest. It sets a new standard for the integration of interior and exterior space, building and site. The stepped configuration allows ample natural light to the interiors and the expansive width joins the steep grades on both sides like a dam.

The ``landscape office'' is believed to have begun with the Weyerhaeuser Company Headquarters project, which incorporated a specially designed modular system in the office interiors. Variations on this system have since become standard for the commercial interior design industry in the U.S.