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 (Occidental Mall), 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.[1] Anderson also rehabilitated the adjacent Union Trust Annex.[2]
The entire lot now occupied by the Union Trust Building (the 1893 portion) was originally filled by the 3-story Pacific House, one of the larger wood-frame hotels in Pioneer Square. Designed by Boone & Meeker, It was built from late 1883 to early 1884 by soon-to-be territorial governor Watson C. Squire[3] and was operated by Eben A. Thorndyke. By 1885 The hotel went into receivership and all the fixtures were auctioned off.[4] It continued on under new management until the great fire and despite the announcement of plans for a 3-story brick hotel to take its place immediately, the site would remain vacant for the next several years afterwards.
The Union Trust Company
The Union Trust Company was incorporated in October 1892 by a wealthy syndicate consisting of bankers Edward O. Graves and Manson F. Backus, attorney Thomas B. Hardin, King County auditor William R. Forrest and now ex-governor Squire with a capital stock of $500,000.[5] The company's purpose would be to manage and develop Squire's numerous property holdings including various subdivisions, the Squire-Latimer Building at First and Main (where they would locate their offices) and the property where the Pacific House had stood, among many others. The future site of the Union Trust Building would be transferred from Squire to the trust company on December 9, 1892.[6]
Main Building
The building in 1900, before the construction of the annex.
Erected in 1893, the four-story building was one of the few substantial buildings built in Seattle that year, owing to the onset of the Panic of 1893. Highly praised at the time of its construction, it was designed by the architectural partnership Skillings and Corner (Warren Porter Skillings and James N. Corner) in a style described as Italian renaissance.[7] The original plan had called for the use of white sandstone on the ground floor and red brick above, but "white" (actually very light gray) brick throughout was chosen instead, an unusual choice for the time, and a trendsetting one. It was also unusual (though not unique) for its time in having electric (rather than hydraulic) elevators.[8]
Used in its early years for a series of wholesale businesses (including Roy & Company, H N. Richmond and Company and John B. Agen), its floors were designed to carry loads of 250 pounds per square foot.[8] The National Grocery Company occupied space in the building until moving into the much larger National Building at Western Avenue and Madison Street in 1904, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[9] The Union Trust Building and most of Squire's Pioneer Square property would be purchased shortly after his 1897 death by New York banker and industrialist Lyman Cornelius Smith who would eventually build the famous Smith Tower.[10]
The building today is largely intact, although it is missing part of its original parapet.[8] This was most likely caused by the 1949 Olympia earthquake which damaged many buildings in the Pioneer Square district.
The Union Trust Annex
The adjacent Union Trust Annex (1900–1901) continues a similar design. Brothers Paul and Michael James Heney commissioned Saunders and Lawton to design a building matching the Union Trust Building in November 1900. M.J. Heney was a contractor in the Yukon who had been responsible for building most of the White Pass and Yukon Route from Skagway to Whitehorse and used the profits from that project to invest in Seattle property.[11] The name Union Trust Annex dates only from the 1970s. It was built for Ernest Thurlow, and was intended for his Superior Candy and Cracker Company;[2][8] the Seattle Cracker and Candy Company was already operating in the adjacent Union Trust Building.[12] Superior Candy and Cracker Company occupied the entire annex building from March 1901 to 1915.[2]
Unlike the Union Trust Building, the Union Trust Annex retains all of its original parapet. [2]
The Union Trust Annex was the original home of the Seattle Unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, opening in 1979 after several years of work.[13] That move one block south and one block east in 2005 to new quarters in the former Cadillac Hotel.[14]
Smith Tower is a skyscraper in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Completed in 1914, the 38-story, 484 ft (148 m) tower is the oldest skyscraper in the city and was among the tallest skyscrapers outside New York City at the time of its completion. It was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River until the completion of the Kansas City Power & Light Building in 1931. It remained the tallest building on the U.S. West Coast for nearly half a century, until the Space Needle overtook it in 1962.
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 Great Seattle Fire was a fire that destroyed the entire central business district of Seattle, Washington on June 6, 1889. The conflagration lasted for less than a day, burning through the afternoon and into the night, and during the same summer as the Great Spokane Fire and the Great Ellensburg Fire. Seattle quickly rebuilt using brick buildings that sat 20 feet (6.1 m) above the original street level. Its population swelled during reconstruction, becoming the largest city in the newly admitted state of Washington.
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park is a national historical park operated by the National Park Service that seeks to commemorate the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s. Though the gold fields that were the ultimate goal of the stampeders lay in the Yukon Territory, the park comprises staging areas for the trek there and the routes leading in its direction. There are four units, including three in Municipality of Skagway Borough, Alaska and a fourth in the Pioneer Square National Historic District in Seattle, Washington.
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.
Ralph D. Anderson was an American architect from Seattle, Washington. He was a founder of Ralph Anderson and Partners, later Anderson Koch Smith. Although much of his work is modernist, he is also strongly associated with preservationism. He was an early and significant contributor to the restoration of Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood, and also participated in restoration projects along First Avenue in the Pike Place Market Historical District in the 1970s.
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.
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 Holyoke Building is a historic building located in downtown Seattle, Washington. It is a substantial five story brick structure with stone trimmings. Construction began at the corner of First Avenue and Spring Streets just before the Great Seattle fire of 1889. Completed in early 1890, it was among the first permanent buildings completed and ready for occupancy in downtown Seattle following the fire. Today the Holyoke Building is one of the very few such buildings still standing in Seattle outside of the Pioneer Square district and is a historic remnant of the northward expansion of Seattle's business district between the time of the great fire and the Yukon Gold Rush in 1897.
The Grand Pacific Hotel is a historic building in Seattle, Washington 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 Diller Hotel is a former hotel building in downtown Seattle, Washington. In the early 1900s, it was known as one of Seattle's few luxury hotels. This historic building is located at the corner of First Avenue and University Street, across from the Seattle Art Museum, and is one of the few remaining buildings left from the 1890s, a period of reconstruction and commercial development after the area was destroyed by the fire of 1889. The hotel was owned by Leonard Diller (1839–1901) and family and was designed by architect Louis L. Mendel. The building is now home to The Diller Room, a craft cocktail bar housed in the former hotel lobby.
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 Lyon Building is a historic building located at 607 Third Avenue in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. It was built in 1910 by the Yukon Investment Company and was named after the city in France of the same name, reflecting the French heritage of the company's owners. It was designed by the firm of Graham & Myers in the Chicago school style of architecture and was built by the Stone & Webster engineering firm, whose use of non-union labor would make the yet unfinished building the target of a bombing by notorious union activist John B. McNamara, who would commit the deadly Los Angeles Times bombing only 1 month after. The Lyon Building was luckily not destroyed due to its substantial construction, and after little delay, it was completed in 1911 and soon became one of Seattle's most popular office addresses for lawyers and judges due to its proximity to Seattle's public safety complex and the King County Courthouse. It was the founding location of many foreign consuls, social and political clubs as well as the City University of Seattle. The building's basement now serves as an entrance the Pioneer Square station of the Seattle Transit Tunnel. The Lyon Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 30, 1995 and was designated a Seattle landmark on August 16, 1996. In 1997 it was converted to residential use as a shelter and services center for the homeless and at-risk by the non-profit Downtown Emergency Service Center, who are the current owners of the building.
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.
John Collins was an Irish-American businessman who served as the fourth elected mayor of Seattle, Washington.
The Maynard Building is a five-story office building in Seattle, Washington. Constructed in 1892 on a Romanesque Revival design by Albert Wickersham, the masonry building was originally known as the Dexter Horton Building and housed Dexter Horton's nascent banking business, which eventually grew into Seafirst Bank. Located at 119 First Avenue South in the city's Pioneer Square neighborhood, the building took its current name in the 1920s in honor of Doc Maynard. The Maynard Building underwent a major refurbishment between 1974 and 1975.
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 Pioneer Square totem pole, also referred to as the Seattle totem pole and historically as the Chief-of-All-Women pole, is a Tlingit totem pole located in Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, Washington.
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 newly 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.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
