August 25, 1999

90-year-old public toilet in Pioneer Square may open to tourists

SEATTLE (AP) -- Ninety years ago, the underground pubic toilet in Pioneer Square was a model of urban civility with its white-tiled walls, terrazzo floor, brass-and nickel-plated fixtures and white Alaskan marble stalls.

The circa-1909 comfort station has been out of use for 40 years, quietly moldering beneath the square's elegant metal-and-glass pergola.

Now the Underground Tour -- which offers its 200,000 annual customers a look at a section of the city built over after the Great Seattle Fire -- wants to clean it up and make it a stop on the tour.

"It's just been sitting there since the '50s doing nothing," said Steve Crosier, general manager of the tour. "It would be cool to show people because it fits in well with what we're about."

The tour has no plans to make the restroom usable -- just to make it accessible and safe. City Councilwoman Jan Drago toured the site last week and reportedly is willing to support the tour plan.

Neither Drago nor Mayor Paul Schell's office immediately returned calls Tuesday to determine whether there was any city interest in restoring the facility to its original purpose.

Opened in September 1909 at a cost of just over $24,000, it operated from 6 a.m. to midnight, offering shoe shines for a dime and individual towel and soap for 2 cents.

Equipped with anterooms for men and women, it averaged 8,000 flushes a day -- 15,000 on Sundays when saloons were closed. Built in the days before "potty parity" -- and before women had a major role in the business world -- it had 16 stalls for men and nine for women.

The only way to reach the restroom now is by way of two nearby manholes, using a ladder to get down there and a flashlight to find the way.

The Underground Tour is prepared to spend as much as $150,000 to break through the sidewalk and install hinged panels that would swing open so visitors could reach the old stairs. The money would also be used to rearrange heavy timbers holding up the facility's ceiling to stabilize it.

"Physically, it's not a problem. We'll clean it up," said local architect Les Tonkin, who is working with the Underground Tour. "The big problem is a lot of heavy timbers holding up the concrete ceiling slabs."

The rehab would include waterproofing. Water from a city sprinkler system that feeds shrubs in the little park surrounding the pergola on top of the restroom is leaking underground.

Crosier said Seattle Parks Superintendent Ken Bounds told him the city is willing to work with the tour on the project. A public hearing would have to be held, and Crosier said city transportation and utility officials would have to sign off on the plans.

He hopes to have the historic public restroom ready by next summer.

The restroom was built about 20 years after most of the Pioneer Square buildings were erected following the fire that destroyed much of downtown.

Pioneer Square's Underground, with remnants of the pre-fire Seattle, is one floor below modern streets. It was closed in 1907 after an outbreak of bubonic plague, and for a time was taken over by the underworld for opium dens and bootlegging.

The Underground Tour began in 1965.