Читать книгу Walking Seattle. 35 Tours of the Jet City's Parks, Landmarks, Neighborhoods, and Scenic Views онлайн

10 страница из 24

• Start at the Paramount Theater, on the southeast corner of 9th Ave. and Pine St. Seattle’s master theater designer B. Marcus Priteca helped create this sumptuous 1928 film-and-vaudeville palace, with a handsome brick exterior and a Versailles-inspired interior. The blue vertical sign outside is a 2009 copy of the original. Looking northwest on 9th, you can see the rooftop Gothic neon announcing the 1926-built Camlin Hotel, now part of a time-share circuit. • Go southwest on Pine. At the southeast corner of 8th and Pine, the cylindrical Tower 801 apartment building houses a retro-modern Caffe Ladro coffeehouse at its base. Kitty-corner from there, the Paramount Hotel’s Dragonfish bar offers happy hour sushi bites and a wall of silent pachinko machines. At 7th, midcentury-esque bar and grill Von’s anchors the 1929 Roosevelt Hotel. • Cross Pine at the southeast corner with 7th Ave. toward the Pacific Place mall. Opened in 1998, it’s a single full-block building disguised with a variety of false facades. Within, upscale chain stores and a multiplex cinema surround a four-story atrium. Across 6th, the Nordstrom flagship store and headquarters building (a handsome white 1918 structure) was remodeled in 1998 from the former Frederick & Nelson, a classy (and still missed) department store that folded in 1992. On the next block, the Westlake Center mall and office tower was built a decade before Pacific Place, when Seattle’s business leaders were less obsessed with high-end luxury everything. Pacific Place has Tiffany’s and the Italian-bistro chain Il Fornaio; Westlake Center has Hot Topic and a Sbarro pizza stand. Across Pine from Westlake Center, triangular Westlake Park is the site of high-profile political rallies and commercial publicity events. At the northwest side of 4th is Seattle’s other heritage department store, built in 1928 as The Bon Marché. It now bears the Macy’s brand, but old-timers still call it “the Bon.” Like the Frederick & Nelson (now Nordstrom) building, it gained four stories in the 1950s. You can tell where the newer part starts—the terra-cotta becomes a lot simpler. • 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. • 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 ssss1.) 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. • 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 ssss1). • 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. • 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). • 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. • 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. • 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