There’s a new place to sit along 12th Ave thanks to a neighborhood project to add some human touches to the streetscape. The result of a $5,000 City of Seattle grant awarded to Capitol Hill Housing’s plan for the new street furniture, this bench in front of Lucky Devil Tattoo is the first of five that will be installed along 12th Ave in coming weeks. Here are the details from the 12th Ave Neighborhood & Business District blog:
The benches were created from surplus granite curbstones available from the City of Seattle. Many thanks are due to Kevin Long of Urban Wilds who did a fantastic job on design and fabrication of the granite stones as well as installation on the sidewalk. We also want to thank Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio for help with the design, offering up a workspace, and general assistance with the project, Greg Lewis for help with installation, 12th Avenue Iron who fabricated the bench legs, Kate Leitch at the Seattle Department of Transportation for helping us with City permits, and to each property and business owner who supported this project.
Here’s a sketch of the original concepts for the benches that have been called “butt stops” as a little ha ha joke in note of 12th’s lack of public transit options. Also, looks like there will be no ticket issues for these benches.
I don’t know. It’s really nice to have benches along the street but they don’t look like they should. To be completely honest, I walked out of my apartment building and stood there staring at that bench on my way to the market because I was utterly confused… It’s half beautiful and half stubby old water pipes?
I agree. Hard to see this as an improvement to the streetscape.
As a business and property owner, I am proud to have this bench installed in front of our building. I think the combo of granite/steel pipes are indicative of the eclectic neighborhood in which we reside/do business – a bit funky, yet refined; definitely shows creativtiy in working with “found” objects. Way better than a sterile park bench purchased from a catalog.
We are glad to see our building tenants and others using the bench – it’s located away from the building so the smokers are further away from our doorway (which is our primary source of fresh air) and it allows us to sit in the sun vs. shade of the building. This is certainly a better spot to sit than the crumbling retaining wall north of the grocery store, especially with Republic of Koffee a stone’s throw from the bench.
We look forward to having other benches installed on 12th and would love to see a “bench walk” event to celebrate these newly found community gathering places.
So, about the legs or “stubby old water pipes”. Vulnerable as they are to the automobile and the vandal, most benches that you see are attached to the concrete by a big metal plate with big clunky nuts and bolts.
We tried to come up with an alternative to that and hoped that the legs would appear to kinda come out of the sidewalk and fit within the budget.
We had also hoped that there would be an interesting tension between the lightness of the legs and the weight of the stone. I hope that you’ll sit and have a cup of coffee with your friend and then check out the other two that we’ve just installed: one by the Chatter Box across from Presse and the other on 12th and Yesler. Love to hear what you think. Happy to hear the down side but when you said ‘half beautiful’ what half was that exactly?