The architecture of Seattle, largest city of the US Pacific Northwest, includes aspects that predate the mid-nineteenth century arrival of the area’s first settlers of European ancestry, and has reflected and influenced numerous architectural styles over time. As of 2015, a major construction boom continues to reconfigure Seattle’s Downtown, as well as neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill, Ballard and, perhaps most dramatically, South Lake Union.
Façadism
Façadism is the practice where a building is almost entirely replaced, with only its original or reconstructed façade (or part of that) preserved. In some cases (such as the Auto Row buildings in the Pike-Pine corridor) new buildings have received height bonuses for preserving a façade. Knute Berger wrote in 2015, “Façadism is not a new phenomenon, but it’s booming in Seattle these days.” Eugenia Woo, director of preservation for Historic Seattle has remarked that “Façadism is NOT preservation. … The result … is often a strange hybrid building that does not meld the new and the old in a coherent manner. …e get the illusion of preservation with the pastiche of the old unsuccessfully jumbled with the new. While not demolition, façadism is less preservation and more a begrudging compromise between the past and the future.”
The Allen Institute for Brain Science Building in South Lake Union is an intermediate case between preservation and reconstruction of a façade. It incorporates elements of the Ford McKay Building (Warren H. Milner, 1922) and Pacific McKay Building (Harlan Thomas and Clyde Grainger, 1925). These buildings with Seattle Landmark status were completely torn down in 2009; 2,760 pieces of terracotta and other elements were saved for reuse in an otherwise completely new building on the same site, and were incorporated in a new structure, with modern structural walls and modern doors and windows designed to resemble the originals. The new building also largely reproduces the interior of the auto showroom on the corner of Westlake and Mercer.
Native and native-influenced architecture
Prior to the arrival of European settlers in the Puget Sound area, the largest building in the Salish Sea region was Old Man House, a longhouse roughly 13.5 miles (21.7 km) northwest of Downtown Seattle near the present-day town of Suquamish. Measuring roughly 800 feet (240 m) in length, it was the largest longhouse ever known and remained the largest building in the region until it was burned by the United States government in 1870.
While there were no native structures of this scale within the city limits of present-day Seattle, the Duwamish tribe had at least 13 villages in that area. Of these, the largest and most important was dzee-dzee-LAH-letch or sdZéédZul7aleecH (“little crossing-over place”) near present-day Pioneer Square, with an estimated 200 people in 1800, before Old World diseases caused massive death in the region. It consisted of eight longhouses, each roughly 60 by 120 feet (18 by 37 m), and an even larger potlatch house.
Although no significant architectural structures from the era before European settlement survive as anything more than archaeological sites, several present-day Seattle buildings deliberately evoke traditional regional Native American architecture. Examples of this include Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Discovery Park, owned by the United Indians of All Tribes; the Duwamish Longhouse, owned by the Duwamish tribe, just west of the Duwamish River, roughly across the street from the present-day Herring’s House Park, whose name commemorates the second-largest historical Duwamish village, tohl-AHL-too (“herring’s house”) or hah-AH-poos (“where there are horse clams”); wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ (“Intellectual House”), a multi-service learning and gathering space for Native American students, faculty and staff on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington; and Ivar’s Salmon House, a restaurant on the north shore of Lake Union.
Maritime and industrial architecture
The two historic Rainier breweries
Boeing
Shipyards
Piers
Port of Seattle buildings, including Pier 66 and Fishermen’s Terminal
Power and water infrastructure
Further information: Electricity in the Puget Sound region and Utilities of Seattle
Post Station in the Pioneer Square neighborhood, steam plant built by Stone and Webster, now owned by Seattle Steam Company. The lower Old Post Station at right was built circa 1890; the tall portion, New Post Station, in 1902.
The Georgetown Steam Plant, now Georgetown PowerPlant Museum, built by Stone and Webster in 1906. One of the first reinforced concrete structures on the U.S. West Coast, it provided electricity for rail and residential use.
Asian influences
Just north of S. King Street on 8th Avenue is one of several early 20th-century buildings in the Chinatown – International District grafting Chinese decoration onto Western architecture.
Asian influence can be seen in the roofline of this Craftsman bungalow at 627 13th E. on Capitol Hill.
The Seattle Buddhist Church, a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple, built 1940-1941, designed by Japanese American Kichio Allen Arai, although the architect of record was Pierce A. Horrocks, because Arai lacked an architectural license
The Historic Chinatown Gate, a modern Paifang archway built in 2007
Kobe Bell on the grounds of Seattle Center, a designated city landmark
Scandinavian influences
Despite a large historic Scandinavian presence in Seattle, especially in Ballard, there is a relative lack of obvious Scandinavian architectural influence in the city. Nearby Poulsbo is nicknamed “Little Norway” for the blatant Scandinavian influence in its downtown; Seattle has almost nothing of the sort.
The sandstone First Covenant Church on Pike and Bellevue in Downtown Seattle, formerly named the Swedish Tabernacle, is an example of Scandinavian-influenced churchbuilding.
The former Norway Hall, 2015 Boren Avenue, designed by Sonke Englehart Sonnichsen and built in 1915, now Raisbeck Performance Hall, Cornish College
Swedish Club / Swedish Cultural Center, 1920 Dexter Avenue, designed by Einar V. Anderson, Arden Croco Steinhart, and Robert Dennis Theriault Sr., and built 1959-1961. Prior to that they were located in a 1902 building on Eight Avenue by contractors Otto Roseleaf, August S. Peterson, and Otto Rudolf Roseleaf.
First Covenant Church
The rise of “green buildings”
The Dexter Horton Building, built 1924, renovated in 2002 and 2013, received LEED Gold certification in 2015.
Olive 8, a hotel/condo building designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects and completed in 2009, is a LEED Silver building with a green roof.
The Bullitt Center, designed by Miller Hull and completed 2013. Certified as a “Living Building”.
Prominent architects
Among the first significant architects in the Pacific Northwest after European settlement were Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart (born Esther Pariseau) and the barely-documented Donald McKay; neither has surviving work in Seattle, although works of both survive in Vancouver, Washington. In Seattle, the two collaborated on Providence Hospital (built 1882–1883; destroyed 1911) at Fifth and Madison, the current site of the William Kenzo Nakamura United States Courthouse. McKay was also responsible in the years 1882–1884 for a major enlargement of the now-demolished Catholic Church of Our Lady of Good Help, as well as designing the Occidental Hotel (First and Yesler, later site of the Seattle Hotel and now the “Sinking Ship” parking garage) and Seattle Engine House No. 1 (both lost in the 1889 Fire) and the Holy Names Academy at Seventh and Jackson (lost in the Jackson Street regrade of 1906).
Elmer H. Fisher, an exponent of the Richardsonian Romanesque style, came to prominence immediately after the 1889 fire; he designed many of the new “fireproof” buildings in what is now the Pioneer Square neighborhood. His best-known surviving building is the Pioneer Building (built 1889–1891) directly on Pioneer Square at First and Yesler; his equally grand Burke Building, built at the same time, was demolished to make way for the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building; a few of its decorative elements survive on the plaza of that Federal Building. Two other surviving Fisher buildings are also right at First and Yesler: the Yesler Building on the southwest corner and the Mutual of New York Building on the northwest corner, both initially built 1890–1891 and later enlarged. His Austin A. Bell Building (1889–1890, now Bell Apartments) remains an equally prominent feature of Belltown.
Englishman Charles Herbert Bebb and German Louis Leonard Mendel made their separate ways to Seattle in the 1890s. Their partnership Bebb & Mendel (1901–1914) was the city’s most prominent architectural firm during its period of activity. Among their many surviving buildings in Seattle are the University Heights School (first portion built 1902), now a community center; the William Walker House (built 1906–1907, also known as “Hill-Crest”) in the Washington Park neighborhood, now the official residence of the president of the University of Washington; the First Church of Christ, Scientist on Capitol Hill (built in two phases, 1908–1909, 1912–14), now converted into condominium apartments; the Frye Hotel (built 1906–1911); the Hoge Building (built 1909–1911) briefly the city’s tallest building; and Fire Station No. 18 (built 1910–1911) in Ballard, now a bar and restaurant.
Another Englishman who figured prominently in Seattle architecture was Liverpool-born John Graham, Sr. From 1905 to 1910 he was in partnership with David J. Myers; they designed houses, apartment buildings, and several Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition pavilions. A prominent surviving Myers-Graham building is the main (“Seaview”) building of The Kenney, a retirement home in West Seattle. He established his own firm in 1910; his numerous downtown buildings in this period include the Joshua Green Building (1913); the Frederick and Nelson department store (1916–1919), now Nordstrom’s flagship store; and the Dexter Horton Building (1921–1924), an office building for First Seattle Dexter Horton National Bank, later Seafirst Bank. Other buildings from this period include the Ford Assembly Plant Building (1913) near the southeast corner of Lake Union—later home to the printer Craftsman Press and is now used as a self-storage building—and the Seattle Yacht Club (1919–1921) in Montlake. In the late 1920s he began working along Art Deco lines, with such buildings as the Roosevelt Hotel (1928–1929); the Bon Marché (1928–1929), now a Macy’s; and the Exchange Building (1929–1931). Grant Hildebrand counts the Exchange Building as “perhaps Graham’s finest work.” He collaborated with Bebb and Gould on the U.S. Marine Hospital complex at the north end of Beacon Hill (1931–1934), later for more than a decade headquarters of Amazon.com, now Pacific Tower. Graham lived until 1955, but he collaborated with William L. Painter in New York City 1936–1942, and it was mainly Graham’s son John Graham, Jr. who eventually built back up a Seattle practice for the firm.
Iowa-born Harlan Thomas started his career in Colorado and traveled widely before arriving in Seattle in his mid-30s in 1906. By the end of 1907, he had already made his mark with his own Mediterranean-style villa on the west slope of Queen Anne Hill, the eclectic Chelsea Family Hotel across from Kinnear Park, and the Italianate Sorrento Hotel on the First Hill edge of Downtown before adopting a more stripped-down style influenced by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen. In the following years he designed a number of schools around Washington state and partnered with various other architects on prominent Seattle buildings: with Clyde Grainger he designed the Corner Market building in Pike Place Market (1911–1912); with W. Marbury Somervell, three Carnegie libraries (1912–1915); with Schack, Young & Myers the Seattle Chamber of Commerce Building (1923–1925); and in the partnership Thomas, Grainger, and Thomas (the latter Thomas being his own son Donald), Seattle’s Rhodes Department Store (1926–1927, later Arcade Plaza Building, now demolished), William O. McKay Ford Sales and Service Building (1925, now reconstructed as part of the Allen Institute for Brain Science), and Harborview Hospital (1929–1931). Other projects in and around Seattle included two fraternal buildings at the University of Washington (the former Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, 1914, now Tau Kappa Epsilon, and the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, 1930), a 500-unit World- War II-era housing project in Bremerton, Washington, and speculative housing designed for developer Albert Balch in northeast Seattle. He also taught architecture at the University of Washington 1926–1940.
Ellsworth Storey was from Chicago, first visited Seattle as a teenager, and settled there in 1903 after earning an architecture degree from the University of Illinois. Like Harlan Thomas, he debuted in Seattle as his own client, building a home for his parents and an adjacent one for himself and his wife. These Ellsworth Storey Residences in Denny-Blaine, completed in 1905, already show his characteristic style; as Grant Hildebrand describes it, “deep eaves, horizontal stretches of mullioned glazing, and above all the imaginative use of modest local materials,” with influences from Swiss chalets, the Prairie School, and the English Arts and Crafts movement. (Bernard Maybeck in the San Francisco Bay Area seems to have arrived independently at a similar style.) “Although… hardly known nationally, few architects have engendered greater local affection.” Not all of Storey’s work is in this style: for example, his 1908 house for J.K. Gordon in the Mount Baker neighborhood is Georgian Revival, and many of his buildings fall broadly under the heading of Tudor Revival, such as Hoo-Hoo House (1909)—which was built for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and subsequently served until 1959 as the University of Washington Faculty Club—and a 1915–1916 Unitarian church, now University Presbyterian Church Chapel. In the 1920s, he designed numerous Seattle residences, church buildings, etc. Meanwhile, back in 1910–1915, Storey had acquired land near Colman Park on the Lake Washington shore and, on speculation, built a set of cottages in his characteristic style. This last proved a lucky thing for him, because in the Great Depression when there was little work for architects, he was still able to earn rents as a landlord while working on government projects such as parks throughout Western Washington and, during World War II, at Sand Point Naval Station.
After his partner Louis Mendel retired in 1914, Charles Bebb partnered with Carl F. Gould in the firm Bebb & Gould. Bebb was more the businessman and engineer; Gould—who in this same period founded the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington (U.W.)—the designer and planner. The firm’s style evolved from Historicism toward Art Moderne. Early on, the firm designed the Times Square Building (1913–1915) for the Seattle Times, the Administration Building (1914–1916) of the Ballard Locks, and developed a General Plan (1915) for the U.W. campus. They contributed to the tradition of Collegiate Gothic with U.W.’s Suzzallo Library—T. William Booth and William H. Wilson characterize the second-story reading room as Gould’s “most inspired” interior space—before taking a decidedly more modern/Deco turn with Seattle’s U.S. Marine Hospital (1930–1932; later, successively, Public Health Hospital, Pacific Medical Center, and with an additional wing Amazon.com headquarters; now Pacific Tower), the Art Institute of Seattle (1931–1933, now Seattle Asian Art Museum), and shortly before Gould’s death in 1939, U.W.’s Penthouse Theater (1938–1940).
Glasgow-born B. Marcus Priteca, was already an Associate of the Royal College of Arts, Edinburgh (now Edinburgh College of Art) when he came to Seattle at the age of 20 for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909. By chance he met vaudeville entrepreneur Alexander Pantages; the two would have a long and fruitful partnership, with Priteca building theaters for Pantages in Seattle and elsewhere. He would eventually design “over 150 movie theaters including 60 of major import.” His Seattle Pantages (a.k.a. Palomar) Theater and office block (1913–1915, demolished) and Coliseum Theater (1914–1916, now converted to retail use) were terra cotta-covered neo-classical showpieces that set the mold for a generation of “movie palaces”. He also designed Seattle’s Orpheum Theater (1926–27, replaced by the south tower of The Westin Seattle), and co-designed Seattle’s still-extant Paramount Theatre (1927–28). Notable theaters of his outside Seattle include the Pantages Theater (Tacoma, Washington) (1919–18) and the later Art Deco-style Pantages Theatre (Hollywood) (1929–30); his smaller Admiral Theater in West Seattle (1942) also show significant Deco influence. Besides theaters, his work included synagogues, the Longacres race track, public housing, private homes, and many other buildings, mostly in or near Seattle. His Bikur Cholim synagogue (1912–1915) in Seattle’s Central District is now the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center.
Properly speaking, Frederick Anhalt was a master builder rather than an architect, though late in life he was made an honorary member of AIA-Seattle. Arriving in Seattle in 1924 or 1925, he worked as a butcher and as a salesman before passing by way of leasing commercial buildings into construction. Originally building a wide variety of residential and commercial structures, he focused within a few years on luxury apartment buildings. When that market dried up in the Great Depression, between the mid-1930s and 1942 he built a number of speculative and custom houses, before abandoning construction for a successful nursery business. Apartments in his buildings from the late 1920s and early 1930s remain among the most sought-after in Seattle. Three—1005 E. Roy Street, 1014 E. Roy Street, and 1600 E. John Street—have Seattle Landmark status in their own right, and others are in Historic Districts.
Nome, Alaska-born Paul Thiry (1904–1993) traveled several times to Europe, as well as around the world in the mid-1930s. Among the first to bring European Modern architecture to the Pacific Northwest, along with partner Alban Shay he soon developed a “softer, more regional variant, with gently sloped roofs and natural wood siding and trim” that became known as the Northwest Style. His work ranged from private homes to military buildings and dams; among other things he was principal architect for the Century 21 Exposition (1962 Seattle World’s Fair) and served at a federal level on the National Capital Planning Commission, contributing to planning and preservation for the United States Capitol. Several of his Seattle buildings were deliberately temporary (e.g. buildings for the World’s Fair), proved to be short-lived (e.g. Our Lady of the Lake Church in Wedgwood, 1940–1941, outgrown and replaced in a mere 20 years; Museum of History and Industry, 1948–1950 in Montlake, demolished to make way for expansion of a freeway), or have been heavily altered and expanded. Among his surviving buildings in Seattle are the KeyArena (1958–1962, originally the Seattle Center Coliseum, interior much altered), the Northeast Library (1954, later expanded), and St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church (1964–1968).
Paul Hayden Kirk, another modernist and “the most widely published of Seattle’s architects,” was born in Salt Lake City but moved to Seattle with his family as a child. His early work was residential and historicist; in the 1940s he began to move in the direction of the International Style and to work increasingly on religious and public buildings. By the mid-1950s, he was developing a modernist style of his own, adopting similar materials to those used by Thiry. Among his buildings in Seattle are University Unitarian Church (1955–1959), Japanese Presbyterian Church (1962–1963), the Magnolia branch of Seattle Public Library (1962–1964), and Meany Hall (1966–1974), the Odegaard Undergraduate Library (1966–1971), and the associated underground parking structure on the University of Washington main campus.
John Graham, Jr. (1908–1991) revived the Seattle practice of his father’s company in the mid-20th Century. Seattle’s Northgate Mall (originally Northgate Center, 1946–1950) was the first of the firm’s over seventy large-scale shopping centers around the country. Outside of shopping malls, the firm’s practice ran heavily to large corporate and institutional clients. Graham projects in Seattle include the brutalist headquarters of Washington Natural Gas (built 1962–1964; later used by University of Washington Medicine; Washington Natural Gas is now Puget Sound Energy); a Seattle high-rise for the Bank of California (1971–1974); the Seattle Sheraton (1978–1982); and the iconic Space Needle (1960–1962) designed jointly with Victor Steinbrueck for the Century 21 Exposition in the Googie style.
Despite his involvement in designing the iconic Space Needle, Victor Steinbrueck is best known as a preservationist and for his sketches of the city. Born in North Dakota, he participated in the Civilian Conservation Corps, worked for various Seattle architects including William J. Bain and built houses, including one for artist Alden Mason (1949), in the same regional modernist style as Thiry and Kirk; he worked with Kirk on the Faculty Center of the University of Washington. Through what Heather MacIntosh describes as “a combination of socialism and romanticism,” he became increasingly interested in preservation and public space, with a particular focus on Pike Place Market. He published three books of sketches and commentary, Seattle Cityscape (1962), Market Sketchbook (1968) and Seattle Cityscape #2 (1973), and co-designed three Seattle parks with landscape architect Richard Haag. One of those, Victor Steinbrueck Park in Pike Place Market, originally Market Park (1981–1982), was renamed in his honor after his death.
In 1943 Seattle architects Floyd Naramore, William J. Bain, Clifton Brady, and Perry Johanson formed a partnership to accept large-scale federal commissions in the Seattle area, including expansion of the Bremerton Naval Shipyard. That firm became NBBJ, with offices in Beijing, Boston, Columbus, Ohio, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Pune, San Francisco, and Shanghai, as well as Seattle. Naramore and Bain, in particular, already had distinguished careers at the time the partnership was formed, with Naramore (often assisted by Brady) having designed numerous Seattle public schools including Garfield, Roosevelt, and Cleveland high schools and Bain designing numerous buildings including the now-landmarked Belroy Apartments and co-designing the Yesler Terrace public housing complex. Prominent NBBJ buildings in or near Seattle include Boeing Commercial Airplane Headquarters (Renton, Washington, 2004), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Headquarters (2011), Russell Investments Center (2006, originally WaMu Center), which also houses the Seattle Art Museum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Headquarters (2011).
Seattle-born Minoru Yamasaki, a key figure of the New Formalism, based his career in New York City, where his projects included the World Trade Center, but also had a significant architectural impact on the his native city. He first came to prominence with the Pacific Science Center, originally the United States Science Pavilion for the Century 21 Exposition. He also designed the IBM Building (1959–1962) and the Rainier Tower (1973–1978), both in conjunction with NBBJ.
Besides NBBJ, other prominent Seattle architectural firms in recent decades include Callison (acquired by Arcadis NV in 2014 and formally merged in October 2015 RTKL Associates, to form CallisonRTKL headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland); Weber Thompson; Bassetti Architects; and, bridging from architecture into landscape architecture, Jones & Jones. Callison (and now CallisonRTKL) was a large firm taking on projects around the world, with projects as far-flung as Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Shanghai, London, and Qatar, and building or remodeling over 100 shops for Seattle-based Nordstrom. Among their projects in Seattle itself are Seattle’s W Hotel, and the office building 2201 Westlake. Weber Thompson, with a more local focus, employs over 70 architects in a practice involving high-rise buildings, interior design, landscape architecture, affordable housing, and sustainable design. Their Seattle high-rises include Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue (completed 2008), Premiere on Pine (completed 2014), *Cirrus (completed 2015), and Luma (completed 2016). The slightly smaller Bassetti Architects has renovated numerous landmarks (e.g. Post Alley Market, the Sanitary Public Market building, the Silver Oakum Building, and the Triangle Market, all within Pike Place Market) and has built or renovated numerous public schools in and around Seattle. Jones & Jones, a boutique operation by comparison, has designed numerous parks and pioneered the habitat immersion method of zoo design in their work for Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. One of their partners, Johnpaul Jones, who is Choctaw and Cherokee on his mother’s side, has made major contributions to buildings related to Native American culture, including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and was the first architect ever to receive the National Humanities Medal. In Seattle, besides several zoo exhibits, they were responsible for the People’s Lodge expansion of the Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Discovery Park and Intellectual House, a Native American center at the University of Washington.
At least two Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architects are represented by buildings in Seattle: Frank Gehry designed the Museum of Pop Culture (2000, originally Experience Music Project) and Rem Koolhaas designed the Seattle Central Library (2004).
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