Topic: Buildings
Festál, a joint community and city-led effort to provide a series of cultural festivals at the Seattle Center, was founded in 1997. The origins of the program may be traced back to the 1962 Wor...
Elmer H. Fisher was Seattle’s foremost commercial architect for a few years surrounding the great fire of 1889. His extensive Romanesque and Classical Revival building programs, which reflected ...
The Red Shield Inn, located on present-day Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Mile 119 on interstate 5 (Pierce County), opened in December 1919. Camp Lewis had opened in September 1917 and soon was home to...
When it opened on April 19, 1929, Seattle's Fox Theatre was described as being "fairy-like in appearance," but that luster would fade pretty quickly in the years following its debut. Known variously a...
Spokane's Fox Theater, today called the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox, is a 1931 Art Deco movie theater turned modern concert hall. Located on Monroe Street between Sprague and 1st avenues, it is ...
Frederick & Nelson was for many years Seattle's premier department store. The store was founded by Donald E. Frederick (1860-1937) and Nels B. Nelson (1854-1907). In 1890, they began selling used ...
Seattle's first branch library was opened on February 2, 1903, in Fremont. The branch was an outgrowth of a privately funded free reading room upstairs in a drug store. The 1921 branch library buildin...
The Frye Art Museum -- once dismissed as a sensibly shod maiden aunt muddling along in the stiletto-heeled art world -- has entered middle age with a new sense of style and self-confidence. Celebratin...
When it was new in 1911, the Frye Hotel, designed by Bebb and Mendel, was described by consensus as simply the finest hotel in Seattle. It was also one of the highest of the city's new steel-frame bri...
The Georgetown Steam Plant was built by the Boston-based Stone & Webster utilities conglomerate, which held a dominant position in electricity generation and public transportation in the Seattle a...
Carl F. Gould founded the University of Washington's Department of Architecture, providing the state of Washington with a pool of locally educated designers. He was a prolific architect who, in partne...
The governor's mansion of the state of Washington was built in 1908 on 12 acres donated by Edmund Sylvester (1821-1887) and accepted by the Territorial Legislature as the site for a state capitol in 1...
Architect John Graham Sr. designed many of Seattle’s most significant commercial buildings during the first half of the twentieth century. Many, including the former Frederick & Nelson build...
Most of downtown Spokane (then known as Spokane Falls) was destroyed by fire on August 4, 1889. The conflagration broke out in an area of flimsy wooden structures and quickly spread to engulf the subs...
Great Western Malting was founded in Vancouver, Washington, shortly after the repeal of Prohibition by a group of Washington and Oregon businessmen, most of whom were brewery owners. Prohibition had s...
In the fall of 1879, 10 years after the first homesteader arrived at Green Lake, a newly erected, simple log cabin schoolhouse opened its doors to 11 pupils near the corner of today's (1999) NE 56th S...
The Greenwood Branch, The Seattle Public Library, opened in 1928 as a direct result of the Greenwood and Phinney Ridge communities coming together for a common purpose. The original rented storefront ...
In this reminiscence, John Brace, great-grandson of Brace and Hergert Mill founder John S. Brace and grandson of Brace Lumber Company cofounder Nick Brace remembers life in the Brace Lumber family and...
Harborview Medical Center traces its roots to 1877, when the first King County Hospital opened on the county poor farm south of Seattle. The hospital moved into an attractive Art Deco building on Seat...
Architects around the world, and particularly women architects in Seattle and Washington, have long looked to L. Jane Hastings as an exemplar and professional leader, and often the first to achieve ke...
The Susan J. Henry Branch, The Seattle Public Library, was located at 425 Harvard Avenue E on Seattle's Capitol Hill. Opened on August 26, 1954, the Henry Library was named for Susan J. Henry (1854-19...
The history of the High Point Branch, The Seattle Public Library is one of turbulence, from the housing boom and mass migrations of World War II to the immigration and urban violence of the 1990s. Sta...
Architect Steven Holl is the designer of two notable King County buildings, Seattle University's Chapel of St. Ignatius (completed March 1997) which won an National A.I.A. award for Design Excellence,...
The Igloo, a diner and drive-in restaurant at the southeast corner of 6th Avenue and Denny Way, operated from late 1940 until sometime in 1954. It featured a distinctive twin-domed design intended, li...