Walking Seattle. Clark Humphrey
King County Administration Building
3 DOWNTOWN: OFF THE GRID: THE CITY CENTER, OFF-CENTER
BOUNDARIES: Western Ave., Union St., Freeway Park, Alaskan Way, and Marion St.
DISTANCE: 1½ miles
DIFFICULTY: Moderate (a few mild inclines)
PARKING: Limited metered street parking; pay lots and garages, including a lot at Western and University and a garage at Western and Seneca St.
PUBLIC TRANSIT: Metro routes #10, 11, 12, 15, 18, 21, 22, and 56 stop at 1st Ave. and University St.
Downtown’s spectacular vistas come with a price. Parts of it are almost too steep to walk. (Some side-street sidewalks are equipped with raised concrete ridges, to help prevent pedestrians from falling backward. Really.) Fortunately, there are ways to lessen this burden. City zoning has long encouraged property owners to add elevators, escalators, tunnels, and other amenities to help move people around the hardest hill climbs. All the shortcuts in this walk (including those on private property) are open to the public, at least during business hours. They also offer up-close and inside views of some of the city’s most spectacular artificial spectacles, from Freeway Park’s giant flower-box setting to the Seattle Tower’s understated elegance to the Exchange Building’s deco glamour.
| • | Start at Western Ave. and University St. A century ago, Western was the “Commission District,” home to Seattle’s wholesale produce industry. Now its warehouses have become loft offices. A whale mural by James Crespinel stands at the northwest corner of this intersection, on the Seattle Steam Co. plant (an independent central-heating provider). To your right are the Harbor Steps, a grand outdoor stairway straddling an office, condo, hotel, and retail complex. Climb these steps, or take the public elevator just south of University, to 1st Ave. |
| • | Cross 1st at University’s north side to the original (1991) end of the Seattle Art Museum, intended by architect Robert Venturi to resemble an upmarket version of a “decorated shed,” albeit a shed clad in limestone and granite. Take the wide outdoor plaza steps to 2nd Ave. and cross. |
| Pay your respects to the region’s war dead at the Garden of Remembrance, on the 2nd Ave. side of Benaroya Hall. Cross University to the northern entrance of the 1201 Third Avenue Building (formerly Washington Mutual Tower, the older of two towers built for that defunct bank). Take the escalator to, then exit through, the 3rd Ave. lobby. | |
| • | Cross 3rd and enter the Seattle Tower lobby, an art deco dreamscape in bronze and marble. Take the elevators to the fifth floor. There, take a right and leave through the alley skybridge to the plaza outside the Financial Center building. Descend that plaza’s outdoor stairs. |
| • | Cross kitty-corner at 4th and University, taking a gander at the Olympic Hotel and Cobb Building along the way (Walk 2). Take the south lobby entrance into Rainier Square’s lobby. Once inside, turn right at the signs for the pedestrian concourse. This three-block-long underground passage connects to the Skinner Building, Seattle Hilton, and Washington Athletic Club. Its walls are lined with big posters chronicling the history of downtown Seattle and that of Seattle’s onetime biggest employer, the Boeing Co. |
| • | This concourse ends at a pair of escalators. Take the up escalator into Two Union Square’s food court. Walk toward a small waiting area with a fireplace. Turn left. At your earliest opportunity, turn right. Take a shorter escalator up, into the building’s upper lobby level. Walk straight and out the building, onto another skybridge. |
| • | On this skybridge, take a left and admire the stately old Eagles Auditorium, now home to ACT (A Contemporary Theatre). It hosted acid-rock acts in the 1960s; despite popular legend, Jimi Hendrix never played there. Turn right and enter the Washington State Convention Center’s second floor. Rotating public-art exhibits line its corridors. |
| • | Take an escalator jaunt to the Convention Center’s fourth floor. Walk straight from the escalator’s end, toward a big glass wall. Take the glass doors to your left, out of the Convention Center and into Freeway Park. This labyrinth of landscaped concrete platforms predates the Convention Center by a decade. When Interstate 5 was routed between downtown and First Hill in the early 1960s, some citizens protested. They called for a roof over the freeway, to keep the two neighborhoods connected. They got a small lid years later, in 1976. |
| • | Walk straight ahead through Freeway Park. At the first path intersection, take a right-and-left dogleg. At the next intersection, take a hard right. Walk downhill to the park’s tail end at the outdoor plaza of the Park Place tower, 6th Ave. and Seneca St. |
| • | Cross kitty-corner at 6th and Seneca. At this intersection’s northwest corner stands Plymouth Church Seattle, a stunning example of a modern Protestant church, all white and asymmetrical. At the southwest corner, the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Hotel’s developers promised a public open space in return for getting to build a taller hotel. They built a tiny windswept plaza atop a very obscure flight of stairs (just try to find it). Go southeast on 6th one block to the University Women’s Club, a brick Georgian Revival building. |
| • | Turn southwest on Spring St., passing the Nakamura Courthouse. Turn southeast on 5th to the Seattle Central Library, a postmodern masterwork. Opened in 2004 and designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, its asymmetric “stacks” allow different square footage for different uses, leading to a spectacular reading room on the tenth floor. Enter at the library’s southeast side. Take the escalator down to the first floor; exit the library at 4th Ave. |
| • | Cross 4th at Madison St. to Safeco Plaza. This 50-story black box was Seattle’s tallest building when built in 1968 (downtown’s first big privately-funded building in nearly 40 years). It opened as the headquarters of Seattle-First National Bank, the state’s largest bank until it decided to speculate in Oklahoma oil leases in the 1980s. Seafirst was sold to Bank of America for pennies on the dollar. The building’s now headquarters to a homegrown insurance company, itself sold to Liberty Mutual. Pass Henry Moore’s Vertebrae sculpture, enter the main lobby, take the elevators or escalators down, and exit onto 3rd Ave. |
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Cross kitty-corner at 3rd and Madison. Walk through the lobby |