Before the Space Needle: 5 Classic Seattle Skyscrapers
Images by Chris Hytha
Writing by Mark Houser
Five buildings featured in the Highrises Collection from Seattle, WA.
Seattle boomed at the end of the 19th century as an outfitting hub for Klondike gold rush prospectors, and celebrated a decade later with the 1909 World's Fair. One fairgoer from Syracuse commissioned Smith Tower, a Seattle highrise that stood as the West Coast's tallest building for nearly 50 years. It took a second world's fair, featuring the Space Needle, to top it. Several distinctive Art Deco structures and a soaring train station clock tower round out the city's select set of antique skyscrapers.
Drone photography of Smith Tower in Seattle, WA from the Highrises Collection.
Smith Tower
Seattle, WA
Few highrises can match the bombast of Seattle’s Smith Tower, which has always claimed to be 42 stories tall, though anyone with eyes can count the windows and see it is not. But rather than quibble about an exaggerated floor count, pay a visit to the opulent original Chinese lounge on the 35th floor and enjoy stunning views from the outdoor observatory of Puget Sound and Mount Rainier, clouds permitting.
It was built by a maker of revolutionary office technology: typewriters. Lyman Smith and his brothers started out manufacturing shotguns in Syracuse, N.Y. When a competing upstate arms maker, Remington, produced the first mechanical typewriter, Smith's gunsmiths figured out an improved version with capital and lowercase letters. The company retooled its precision machining plant for peaceful purposes and later became part of Smith-Corona.
Smith's wife, Flora, and son, Burns, visited Seattle in 1888 and were smitten, so he invested in several downtown parcels sight unseen. He finally made it out for the 1909 World's Fair, and while there announced plans to build an 18-story skyscraper. His son talked him into making it the West Coast's tallest building, which it remained until the Space Needle debuted at the 1962 World's Fair.
Drone photography of Washington Athletic Club in Seattle, WA from the Highrises Collection.
Washington Athletic Club
Seattle, WA
The original promoter of this sports skyscraper skedaddled under scrutiny for questionable real estate dealings. The financier who stepped in after him to finish the job later went to prison for financial misdeeds. Neither man was as noteworthy as the local high school girl who trained in the Washington Athletic Club's sixth-floor swimming pool.
Members invited Helene Madison and her coach to join them even before the doors of their new highrise opened. In a brief but unprecedented career, Madison became the only athlete in history to hold every world record in a sport — 16 record women's freestyle times from 100 meters to a mile — and capped that achievement by winning three gold medals at the 1932 Olympics.
The pool is now named after her, and a plaque at sidewalk level honors another important woman in the club's history: Hannah Newman, the prior owner of the parcel. Her husband diplomatically had it cast to balance out a statue he commissioned in Alaska to honor another woman, a long-lost love he met during the Klondike gold rush.
The club's winged logo features prominently in the sculpted terracotta facade. Preserved elements inside include etched elevator doors and the original club library.
Drone photography of King Street Station in Seattle, WA from the Highrises Collection.
King Street Station
Seattle, WA
It may not seem so, but this station was built on a steep hillside. The hill used to be elsewhere, however. Engineers leveled it with water cannons and used the dirt to fill in a marshy tidal flat to allow urban sprawl, including this terminal and its adjacent railyard. Excavators also bored a mile-long train tunnel under the downtown to this station to cut down on congestion.
James Hill, a Minnesota shipping clerk with only one functioning eye thanks to a childhood incident with an arrow, convinced investors to join him in building the first privately financed transcontinental tracks, the Great Northern Railway. Hill became one of the wealthiest Gilded Age rail barons and gained control of the Northern Pacific, one of the three original — and deeply state-subsidized — West Coast routes and his main competition for Seattle-bound traffic.
Both lines stopped at this station, crowned by a clock tower modeled on Venice's famed campanile. The building was designed by Hill's preferred Minnesota architects, who later produced plans for Michigan Central Station in Detroit and assisted with New York's Grand Central. Their lavishly appointed main waiting room was the victim of a midcentury mauling but has been exquisitely restored.
Drone photography of Northern Life Tower in Seattle, WA from the Highrises Collection.
Northern Life Tower
(Seattle Tower)
Seattle, WA
Conceived as an Art Deco mountain, this highrise once dominated the city skyline. Its roof is capped by tapered spires meant to resemble evergreens, while its dark gray marble lobby, brightened by a gold leaf ceiling, feels like an elegant cave. Spelunk to the end to find a bronze map of the Pacific and a plaque with the founders of the insurance company that erected the building.
Ohio brothers Tasso and David Morgan came to Oregon in 1887 and started an insurance business, relocating to Seattle in 1906. They bundled health and accident policies with life insurance, a novel combination that won them many customers. Innovations persisted, including a "souvenir tower policy" commemorating this skyscraper's dedication that offered a triple payout if the holder died in a car crash.
Now known as Seattle Tower, the building stands on the original site of the University of Washington, which relocated in 1895 but continues to lucratively lease its large lot, called the Metropolitan Tract. Architect Abraham Albertson came to Seattle in 1907 to supervise construction of a Beaux-Arts office and retail complex on the sprawling tract, including the Cobb Building, the earlier development's sole survivor, just across what is still called University Street.
Drone photography of Hotel Roosevelt in Seattle, WA from the Highrises Collection.
Hotel Roosevelt
(Hotel Theodore)
Seattle, WA
This highrise is one of countless hotels named for America's youngest president. Theodore Roosevelt visited Seattle in 1903 in a ceremonial flotilla, his bully pulpit bluster set at full wattage. The chief executive assured the welcoming crowd that their neighbor Alaska would eventually surpass the Scandinavian peninsula in population — a feat that would have required 7 million more Alaskans then, or 15 million now.
Seattle semi-Scandinavian Severt Thurston, an Icelandic immigrant, headed Western Hotels, the regional chain that opened the Roosevelt in 1930. Steady growth over the following decades led to a name change, first to Western International, then the abbreviated Westin. Thurston's successor, Edward Carlson, also organized the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and inspired its centerpiece, the Space Needle.
That futuristic tower was the creation of architect John Graham, whose father designed this hotel. The senior Graham was prolific; the hotel was one of two Art Deco towers he contributed to Seattle's skyline in 1930, along with the Exchange Building.
Now the boutique Hotel Theodore, the property features avant-garde lobby art and displays curated from the Museum of History and Industry. The bold decor mirrors the spirit of the original hotel, which when it opened had a coffee shop painted with scenes of life on other planets.
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