Turn southeast on 3rd Ave. Near Pike St. is the Century Square retail and office complex (known to some as “the Braun shaver building” for its curved roof). Across Pike stand the onetime outposts of five-and-dime rivals Woolworth and Kress. The former now houses Ross Dress for Less; the latter’s tenants include an IGA supermarket (in the basement). At Union St., a cinema that went porno in the ’70s is now the Triple Door, a posh music and cabaret joint. Beyond Union is the swank Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony. It looks a lot like a streamlined modern Protestant church—if Protestant churches had huge Dale Chihuly chandeliers in their lobbies.
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Turn northeast on University St. On the southeast corner of 3rd and University, the 1929 Seattle (née Northern Life) Tower is a 27-story art deco mountain peak. (We’ll look more closely at it in Walk 3.) At this intersection’s northwest corner, the 1910 Cobb Building is 11 stories of Beaux Arts brick cladding with a graceful curved corner. Its former full-block-long clone across 4th, the White-Henry-Stuart Building, was razed in the 1970s for Rainier Square, a glass-and-steel tower above an odd, tapered pedestal above-ground-floor retail. It was designed by Seattle architect Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the World Trade Center towers in New York.
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Cross 4th Ave. and walk southeast. To your left, the 1924 Olympic Hotel remains, as an old ad slogan put it, “the hotel Seattle calls home.” Once the flagship of the chain now known as Westin, it’s now run by the Toronto-based Fairmont Hotels. On the following block, three newer hotels offer less-formal luxury lodgings. Beyond Spring St. two buildings, the Seattle Central Library and Safeco Plaza, bookend four decades of monumental architecture (more about them in Walk 3).
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To your left south of Madison St. stands the 901 Fifth Avenue Building, built in 1974 for the Bank of California; the Bartell Drug store on the ground floor used to be that bank’s lobby. At the end of that block, the YMCA’s collegiate Gothic–style building was a 1931 addition to the 1907 original, since razed for an office tower. To your right beyond Marion St., the Pacific (née Leamington) Hotel, a pair of 1918 low-rises, has been respectfully altered into affordable apartments. To your left from there, the ivy-covered Rainier Club has been the city’s poshest private meeting and dining hall since 1904. One block farther, across Columbia St., the three concave towers of Columbia Center rise 76 stories, the tallest building west of the Mississippi.
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Continue on 4th beyond Cherry St. to the 2003-vintage City Hall, a grand postmodern space with a two-level public square. A Nordic-modern City Council chamber anchors its interior. If you’re walking during regular business hours, you can take City Hall’s elevators up to its 5th Ave. level and out its eastern exit. Otherwise, take a steep walk up James St., past the King County Administration Building (which looks a lot like an old console TV set with the doors closed).
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Turn northwest on 5th Ave. The police department and municipal court are in the Seattle Justice Center at 5th and James. The city bought an entire high-rise from a bankrupt developer; it’s now the Seattle Municipal Tower beyond Cherry St. At the southwest corner of 5th and Marion, Daniels Recital Hall occupies a grand 1908 Beaux Arts building, formerly First United Methodist Church.
Beyond Madison St., the 1940 Nakamura Federal Courthouse sits behind a half-block lawn that used to be downtown’s biggest open space. Just before Seneca St., the 1913 YWCA building offers relief sculptures of classical Greek women reading scrolls and holding swords. Just across Seneca, the IBM Building is another Minoru Yamasaki design in understated white stripes and clean lines and curves.
North of University St., the Skinner Building somehow combines two 1920s styles, Mediterranean palazzo and Chinese exotica. The latter is most prevalent inside the building’s anchor space, the 5th Avenue Theatre, another movie palace that now hosts stage musicals. (The big exterior sign is a new addition, designed to look as if it had always been there.)
To your right at 5th and Pike St., the US Bank Centre is a 1980s attempt to bring ornamental frills back to office-tower architecture. Across Pike, Banana Republic occupies what had been Priteca’s 1916 Coliseum Theater, billed by some as the first US building made expressly as a movie house. On the intersection’s northwest side, three former Nordstrom buildings now host Urban Outfitters and Sephora.
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Turn northeast (right) on Pike past a Sheraton hotel and recent chain-retail structures. Continue at 8th Ave., to a domed skybridge over Pike at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. The skybridge wasn’t there when the World Trade Organization met here in 1999; if it had been, thousands of street-filling protesters wouldn’t have succeeded in blocking access to the place.
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To return to this walk’s start, walk to 9th and Pine, then take a left and continue for one block.
BACK STORY: RENAMED BUILDINGS
Many local buildings have gone through name changes because of acquisitions, rebranding, and other motivations. Many old-timers insist on using the buildings’ previous names. Here’s a guide to the more prominent renamings:
Paramount Theater
CONNECTING THE WALKS
This walk connects easily to a half dozen other walks. It crosses Walk 3 at several points. It ends three blocks southwest of Walk 26. At 5th and Pine you’re three blocks southeast of Walk 5. At 3rd and Pine you’re two blocks from Walk 4. At 4th and Cherry you’re one block northeast of Walk 1. At 5th and Seneca you’re three blocks southwest of Walk 27.
POINTS OF INTEREST
Paramount Theater stgpresents.org, 911 Pine St., 206-467-5510
