Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Downtown Seattle, Washington, US. It was once the heart of the city: Seattle's founders settled there in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point on the far side of Elliott Bay. The early structures in the neighborhood were mostly wooden, and nearly all burned in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. By the end of 1890, dozens of brick and stone buildings had been erected in their stead; to this day, the architectural character of the neighborhood derives from these late 19th century buildings, mostly examples of Richardsonian Romanesque.
The Pioneer Building is a Richardsonian Romanesque stone, red brick, terra cotta, and cast iron building located on the northeast corner of First Avenue and James Street, in Seattle's Pioneer Square District. Completed in 1892, the Pioneer Building was designed by architect Elmer Fisher, who designed several of the historic district's new buildings following the Great Seattle Fire of 1889.
The T.G. Richards and Company Store, also known as Whatcom County Territorial Courthouse, is the first and oldest brick building in the state of Washington, United States, and is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The Union Trust Building is a commercial building in Seattle, Washington, United States. Located in the city's Pioneer Square neighborhood, on the corner of Main Street and Occidental Way South, it was one of the first rehabilitated buildings in the neighborhood, which is now officially a historic district. In the 1960s, when Pioneer Square was better known as "Skid Road", architect Ralph Anderson purchased the building from investor Sam Israel for $50,000 and set about remodeling it, a project that set a pattern for the next several decades of development in the neighborhood. Anderson also rehabilitated the adjacent Union Trust Annex.
The Hamilton Building also known as The Flatiron Building of Bellingham and the Bellingham Bay Furniture Building was the first "skyscraper" in Bellingham. Built in 1908 for Talifero Simpson Hamilton's growing Bellingham Bay (B.B.) Furniture Company established in 1889, the building cost $100,000 and used thirty-five thousand barrels of cement along with 200,000 pounds of steel. Due to its triangular shape and resemblance to the Fuller Building in New York, the building instantly garnered the flatiron nickname. It was Bellingham's tallest structure until 1926.
The Arctic Club Building is a ten-story hotel in Seattle, Washington located at the Northeast corner of Third Avenue and Cherry Street. Built in 1914 for the Arctic Club, a social group established by wealthy individuals who experienced Alaska's gold rush, it was occupied by them from construction until the club's dissolution in 1971. It is entirely faced with cream white terra cotta with submarine blue and orange-brown accents. The building is recognizable by the terra cotta walrus head sculptures lining the third floor of the building and its iconic polar bear in the Polar Bar, the hotel's bar and cocktail lounge. It is one of the finest examples of multi-colored matte glaze terra cotta work in the city. Recently restored, the building has been adapted for use as a luxury hotel, Arctic Club Seattle. A rooftop garden used by the social club was replaced with a penthouse office suite.
Elmer H. Fisher was an architect best known for his work during the rebuilding of the American city of Seattle after it was devastated by fire in 1889. He began his career as a carpenter and migrated from Massachusetts to the Pacific Northwest, where he practiced architecture from 1886 to 1891. After his reputation was damaged by litigation and personal scandal in Seattle, he relocated to Los Angeles in 1893, where he only had modest success as an architect before returning to carpentry, dying around 1905 with his final years almost as mysterious as his early years; the details of his death and his burial location remain unknown. His commercial building designs played a major role in reshaping Seattle architecture in the late 19th century and many still survive as part of the Pioneer Square Historic District.
The Masonic Lodge Building, also known as the Campbell Building and first known as the French & Church Building, is an historic building located at 702 Market Street at the corner of Seventh Avenue in the historic commercial core of Kirkland, Washington. It was built in 1890-91 by Kirkland businessman and postmaster Edwin M. Church with pioneer Harry D. French as part of the land boom following Peter Kirk's proposal of building a huge steel mill on the east side of Lake Washington. Home to Kirkland's Post Office from 1891 to 1907, In 1922, The building was purchased by Kirkland Lodge No. 150 of the Free and Accepted Masons, which still occupies the building's upper level.
William Boone was an American architect who practiced mainly in Seattle, Washington from 1882 until 1905. He was one of the founders of the Washington State chapter of the American Institute of Architects as well as its first president. For the majority of the 1880s, he practiced with George Meeker as Boone and Meeker, Seattle's leading architectural firm at the time. In his later years he briefly worked with William H. Willcox as Boone and Willcox and later with James Corner as Boone and Corner. Boone was one of Seattle's most prominent pre-fire architects whose career lasted into the early 20th century outlasting many of his peers. Few of his buildings remain standing today, as many were destroyed in the Great Seattle fire including one of his most well known commissions, the Yesler – Leary Building, built for pioneer Henry Yesler whose mansion Boone also designed. After the fire, he founded the Washington State chapter of the American Institute of Architects and designed the first steel frame office building in Seattle, among several other large brick and public buildings that are still standing in the Pioneer Square district.
The Bell Apartments, also known as the Austin A. Bell Building is a historic building located at 2324 1st Avenue in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle Washington. The building was named for Austin Americus Bell, son of one of Seattle's earliest pioneers, but built under the supervision of his wife Eva following Bell's unexpected suicide in 1889 soon after proposing the building. It was designed with a mix of Richardsonian, Gothic and Italianate design elements by notable northwest architect, Elmer Fisher, who designed many of Seattle's commercial buildings following the Great Seattle fire.
The Colman Building is a historic office building on First Avenue in downtown Seattle, Washington. It occupies a half of a block in proximity to Pioneer Square, and is bound by First Avenue, Marion, and Columbia Streets. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a City of Seattle landmark.
The Grand Pacific Hotel is a historic building in Seattle, Washington, United States. It located at 1115-1117 1st Avenue between Spring and Seneca Streets in the city's central business district. The building was designed in July 1889 and constructed in 1890 [Often incorrectly cited as 1898] during the building boom that followed the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. Though designed as an office building, the Grand Central had served as a Single room occupancy hotel nearly since its construction, with the Ye Kenilworth Inn on the upper floors during the 1890s. The hotel was refurnished and reopened in 1900 as the Grand Pacific Hotel, most likely named after the hotel of the same name in Chicago that had just recently been rebuilt. It played a role during the Yukon Gold Rush as one of many hotels that served traveling miners and also housed the offices for the Seattle Woolen Mill, an important outfitter for the Klondike.
The Agen Warehouse, also known as the 1201 Western Building is an historic former warehouse building located at 1201 Western Avenue in Seattle, Washington. Originally constructed in 1910 by John B. Agen (1856–1920), widely considered the father of the dairy industry in the Northwest, for his wholesale dairy commission business, it was designed by the partnership of John Graham, Sr. and David J. Myers with later additions designed by Graham alone. After years of industrial use, the building was fully restored to its present appearance in 1986 for offices and retail with the addition of a penthouse and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 23, 1998.
The Barnes Building, originally known as the Odd Fellows' Block, the Masonic Temple from 1909 to 1915, and later Ingram Hall, is a historic fraternal and office building located at 2320-2322 1st Avenue in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Designed in early 1889 and constructed in late 1890 by Seattle Lodge No. 7 of the International Order of Odd Fellows and designed for use by all of the city's Odd Fellow lodges, it is the earliest known surviving work of Seattle architect William E. Boone and George Meeker and remains in an almost perfect state of preservation. The Barnes building has played an important role in the Belltown Community and Seattle's dance community. It was used by the Odd Fellows for 17 years before their departure to a newer, bigger hall in 1909 and was home to a variety of fraternal & secret societies throughout the early 20th century, with the Free and Accepted Masons being the primary tenant until their own Hall was built in 1915. The ground floor has been a host to a variety of tenants since 1890 ranging from furniture sales to dry goods to farm implement sales and sleeping bag manufacturing, most recently being home to several bars. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places as The Barnes Building on February 24, 1975.
The Hull Building is a historic commercial building located at 2401-2405 1st Avenue in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Designed by notable Northwest architect Elmer Fisher, It was constructed in the latter half of 1889 as an investment property by Seattle politician Alonzo Hull (1843-1929) and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 27, 1983. It is adjacent to the Battery Street Tunnel's south portal.
The Colonial Hotel is a historic building in Seattle located at 1119-1123 at the southwest corner of 1st Avenue and Seneca Streets in the city's central business district. The majority of the building recognizable today was constructed in 1901 over a previous building built in 1892-3 that was never completed to its full plans.
The German House also known as the Assay Office and Prosch Hall is a building in the First Hill area of Seattle, Washington, which since its construction in 1893 has variously functioned as an office block, an entertainment hall and, until 1932, the city's assay office through which most of the gold brought to Seattle from the Yukon gold rush was processed into bricks. Following World War II the building returned to the possession of its previous German-American owners; it continues today to be a popular venue for German-themed events in Seattle. It was designated a Seattle Landmark in 1983. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Assay Office in 1972.
The Lottie Roth Block is an historic commercial building located near downtown Bellingham, Washington and is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Built by quarry manager and Washington State Legislator Charles Roth and named after his wife, Lottie, the building is clad in the famous Chuckanut Sandstone from his Bellingham Bay Quarry that would be used in countless building projects across the region. Completed in 1891, it was one of the last large commissions of noted Northwest architect Elmer H. Fisher and his only project in Whatcom County. While initially built as an office/retail building in anticipation of the commercial expansion of the town of Whatcom, it was converted entirely to Apartments by 1918 when commercial development moved in the opposite direction towards New Whatcom, which after 1903 became the new city of Bellingham's downtown. Still strictly serving as a residential building to the current day, the Lottie Roth Block was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 12, 1978.
The Interurban Building, formerly known as the Seattle National Bank Building (1890–1899), the Pacific Block (1899–1930) and the Smith Tower Annex (1930–1977), is a historic office building located at Yesler Way and Occidental Way S in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Built from 1890 to 1891 for the then recently formed Seattle National Bank, it is one of the finest examples of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in the Pacific Northwest and has been cited by local architects as one of the most beautiful buildings in downtown Seattle. It was the breakthrough project of young architect John Parkinson, who would go on to design many notable buildings in the Los Angeles area in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The Mutual Life Building, originally known as the Yesler Building, is an historic office building located in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood that anchors the West side of the square. The building sits on one of the most historic sites in the city; the original location of Henry Yesler's cookhouse that served his sawmill in the early 1850s and was one of Seattle's first community gathering spaces. It was also the site of the first sermon delivered and first lawsuit tried in King County. By the late 1880s Yesler had replaced the old shanties with several substantial brick buildings including the grand Yesler-Leary Building, which would all be destroyed by the Great Seattle Fire in 1889. The realignment of First Avenue to reconcile Seattle's clashing street grids immediately after the fire would split Yesler's corner into two pieces; the severed eastern corner would become part of Pioneer Square park, and on the western lot Yesler would begin construction of his eponymous block in 1890 to house the First National Bank, which had previously been located in the Yesler-Leary Building. Portland brewer Louis Feurer began construction of a conjoined building to the west of Yesler's at the same time. Progress of both would be stunted and the original plans of architect Elmer H. Fisher were dropped by the time construction resumed in 1892. It would take 4 phases and 4 different architects before the building reached its final form in 1905. The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York only owned the building from 1896 to 1909, but it would retain their name even after the company moved out in 1916.
.jpg){kind=link}