Union Trust Building (Seattle)
Encyclopedia
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, USA, was one of the first rehabilitated buildings in the Pioneer Square
Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington
Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Downtown Seattle, Washington, USA. 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...
neighborhood, now officially a historic district
Historic district
A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries, historic districts receive legal protection from development....
. In the 1960s, when the neighborhood was better known as "Skid Road", architect Ralph Anderson
Ralph Anderson (Seattle architect)
Ralph D. Anderson was an architect, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. 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...
purchased the building from Sam Israel
Sam Israel
Sam Israel was a real estate developer and investor.-Biography:Israel was born in Rhodes, then part of the Ottoman Empire, now part of Greece. He immigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a shoemaker in Seattle, Washington...
for $50,000 and set about remodeling it, a project that set a pattern for the next several decades of development in that neighborhood. Anderson also rehabilitated the adjacent Union Trust Annex.
The main building
The four-story building was one of the many that went up in the "burnt district" in the years after the Great Seattle FireGreat Seattle Fire
The Great Seattle Fire was a fire that destroyed the entire central business district of Seattle, Washington, USA, on June 6, 1889.-Early Seattle:In the fall of 1851, the Denny Party arrived at Alki Point in what is now the state of Washington...
of 1889; it was erected in 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). Used in its early years for a series of wholesale businesses (including Roy & Company, H N. Richmond and Company and John B. Agen), it was designed to carry loads of 250 pounds per square foot. 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.
The original plan called for the use of white sandstone on the ground floor and red brick above, but "white" brick (actually very light gray) 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) elevator
Elevator
An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...
s.
The building is largely intact, although it is missing part of its original parapet
Parapet
A parapet is a wall-like barrier at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony or other structure. Where extending above a roof, it may simply be the portion of an exterior wall that continues above the line of the roof surface, or may be a continuation of a vertical feature beneath the roof such as a...
. Most likely caused by an earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
in 1949 which damaged many buildings in the Pioneer Square district.
The Union Trust Annex
The adjacent Union Trust Annex (1900–1901) continues a similar design; the architect is unknown, but it was not Skillings and Corner. The name Union Trust Annex dates only from the 1970s. The use of light brick was, by then, a well-established practice. It was built for Ernest Thurlow, and was intended for his Superior Candy and Cracker Company; the Seattle Cracker and Candy Company was already operating in the adjacent Union Trust Building. Superior Candy and Cracker Company occupied the entire annex building from March 1901 to 1915.Unlike the Union Trust Building, the Union Trust Annex retains all of its original parapet.
The Union Trust Annex was the original home of the Seattle Unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park commemorating the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s. The gold rush was in the Yukon Territory, and this park comprises staging areas for the trek there, and routes leading in its direction...
, opening in 1979 after several years of work. That move one block south and one block east in 2005 to new quarters in the former Cadillac Hotel.