The story is as old as the recent development boom on Capitol Hill. A small, quirky building gets torn down. A new one goes up (often these days, the new one is four or five stories, often with ground floor retail). Longer-time residents bemoan the lack of architectural flourish in the new place as it quickly fills with people eager to live here. Those people, in turn, bemoan the lack of architectural flourish in the next lot that undergoes the process, and the cycle of life continues.
UPDATE: OK. OK. Ugliness is arbitrary. We’ve updated the post to reflect a cold, hard truth — the editor thinks The Weatherford is ugly. In true CHS style, we now risk throwing more wood on the ugly/not ugly fire with a brief survey featuring some of the most recently completed developments around the Hill. We’ve tried to be fair with imagery by using marketing photos or pictures from the CHS Flickr Pool. Please let us know your arbitrary ugly/not ugly thoughts. Create your survey with SurveyMonkey
One of the newest cases is The Weatherford building at 14th Ave East and E John. The building had been the site of a Victorian-era home, albeit one which had been much modified over the years, which housed an antique shop. Before that it was the home of Ella McBride, a photographer, mountain-climber and all-around super-interesting person.
For a number of reasons, campuses merit special attention from the fan of architecture, including how — in a concise venue — differing design approaches can be observed. The earliest academic campuses include those of the medieval universities in northern Italy and in England, with Cambridge and Oxford setting the strongest precedents for what has become known as collegiate Gothic. Those of Italian influence (Padua and Bologna for instance) also served as models, but in a Renaissance flavor. These divergent sources from the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean created a menu of architectural styles for institutions that followed; one pick one’s campus style, as it were, to be either pointy (Gothic) or round (Renaissance). A splendid example of the former is found just to the north of Capitol Hill on the University of Washington campus, whose historic core abounds with buildings of the collegiate Gothic flavor.
Like the other primary and secondary school campuses I have written about, Seattle Prep brings an important assembly of building and landscape to Capitol Hill. The school is unique among the three mentioned as it most closely resembles the traditional college campus. It is not associated with one splendid building as is Holy Names nor did it evolve in an organic and engaging manner as did Bertschi School. Seattle Prep is a planned campus of many buildings purposely built over time. Yet, within its planning, each building has it own unique identity and represents the prevailing tastes of its time, making the campus a great microcosm of larger architectural and academic trends. Continue reading →
For more than 2000 years, the dome has held a privileged position in Western architecture. As the three dimensional expression of the circle, whose geometrical perfection is venerated by cultures world-wide, the dome symbolizes importance more than any other single architectural feature. One of the oldest domes — and perhaps the most famous — is the Pantheon in Rome, a temple built during the reign of Caesar Augustus (63 B.C. – 14 A.D.) in honor of twelve of Rome’s most important deities. Since then, the geometrically powerful form has lent its geometrical purity to convey importance to a variety of institutions, be they governmental (the Washington State Capitol, Olympia), academic (the Rotunda, the University of Virginia), or ecclesiastical (Saint Peter’s, Rome). And, why not? You see a dome on a building, and you know it means business.
One institution that was an early adopter of the dome was the nascent Catholic Church; and the dome, as it turned out, was conveniently at hand. Soon after Rome’s decline, the Church adopted the Pantheon as a Christian place of worship, and it became an important early church. The Pantheon (and the cachet of its dome) enabled the Church to associate itself with ancient Rome, Europe’s grandest civilization and greatest engineer-architects. In the following millennia, the dome has found home atop many Catholic institutions in dozens of countries, including Capitol Hill’s own Holy Names Academy, a Catholic girl’s high school and one of our neighborhood’s most splendid buildings. And while its dome may be the first architectural element to catch one’s eye, Holy Names’ classically inspired delights continue throughout its original building. Continue reading →
The Seattle Asian Art Museum in Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park is a splendid building housing a magnificent collection of ancient and contemporary art. Designed by the Seattle firm Bebb and Gould (designers of many noteworthy structures in Seattle, including many prominent homes on Capitol Hill) and built in 1933, it originally housed the entire collection of the Seattle Art Museum.
(Images: John Feit/Schemata Workshop with permission to CHS)
Set within Volunteer Park, SAAM shares its museum-in-the-park setting with other museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose home is in New York City’s Central Park. As private collections predated by centuries those offered for public view, the museum-in-the-park typology finds precedent in that of the manor house in the landscape of either a noble’s estate in Europe or that of the landed elite of the East coast of the United States. Both the museum and the public garden are places of leisure, and their pairing is sensible, for sure, and allows for a full day’s outing both in and out-or-doors. In this tradition, SAAM and Volunteer Park present no less compelling a pairing than their historic or big city predecessors.
Art Deco (approximately the style in which SAAM was designed), to my mind, has always had a somewhat precarious and undervalued place within the history of modernist design. It never garnered the serious attention paid to many other 20th century movements, because it was seen, perhaps, as only a pleasant if not too serious ‘scenic’ detour along the thoroughfare of the more rigorous, international style modernism that eclipsed it. Architects, especially, like to see modernism as the built manifestation of industrialization and of the Enlightenment’s goal of human progress. Modernism’s emphasis on functionality, abstraction, and a machine aesthetic are well known. While modernist, Art Deco was perhaps too populist an expression of modernism’s machine aesthetic ideology, leading to deco’s being ultimately and sadly dismissed by ‘serious’ practitioners and their academies in favor of more somber fare. Ironically, deco’s embellishment with organic motifs and stylized figures doomed it to a short life even if those embellishments were crafted in the same materials, precision, means of that modernism propounded. Given its rather short life and relatively meager legacy, we are fortunate indeed to have such a building as SAAM, and that it is open to all to relish in.
Among modern materials, aluminum figures prominently, including in many Art Deco designs such as at SAAM. While not a new material, aluminum’s manufacturing costs had been significantly reduced by the late 19th and early 20th century making it more readily available (until then, it was priced as was silver). Continue reading →
Bertschi School is a private K – Fifth grade school on 10th Avenue E, on the northern slopes of Capitol Hill. Founded in 1975, and steadily growing to its current enrollment of about 235 students, its measured and incremental growth on the Hill is a fascinating example of both architecture’s and landscape’s marking of time as well as the fulfillment of the vision of the school’s founder to support high quality and progressive design.
After several unsuccessful years of hoping to come across the St Mark’s Greenbelt during one of my neighborhood walks, I resolved this past spring to make a dedicated effort to find it. Although I had yet to visit it, I imagined the Greenbelt would present a unique environment to enjoy Capitol Hill, and another pathway to connect the highlands of 10th Avenue with the lowlands of Lakeview Drive. Google maps revealed that the Greenbelt is between the Blaine Street hill-climb and St Mark’s Cathedral. I decided to make a bit on a loop of my search, and took the long drop down the Blaine Street hill-climb from 10th Avenue to Lakeview Boulevard, after which I planned to ascend back up to Tenth through the Greenbelt itself.
If you’re a fan of urban agriculture, urban design, or just enjoy a bit of urban futurism, check out these decidedly fictitious plans for a roof top farm in Capitol Hill.
Architects at Weber Thompsondreamed up the commercial sized hydroponic farm as a submission to the Seattle Architecture Foundation’s 16th Annual Exhibit, WORLD CITY. The prototype farm is designed to sit on top of the future Pike Mortorworks building, also designed by Weber Thompson.
Here’s what Weber Thompson has to say about their design:
In our exploratory design models, the Pike Motorworks building, which contains retail and residential space, is given an unexpected twist in which the rooftop becomes a hydroponic commercial urban farm installation. Instead of consuming, the building actually ends up contributing, in the form of fresh produce for the occupants, the neighbors, and the city. As our urban centers grow, so too will our need for access to fresh food, which is why we believe that urban agriculture is a viable solution for creating vibrant, self-sustaining cities that fit within and support their global community.
Even without an urban farm, Pike Motorworks is one of the most ambitious projects planned in Pike/Pine and just got a re-start after developers at the Wolff Company put the project on hold earlier this year. The massive seven-story, 260-unit mixed-use apartment project at Harvard and Pike will transform a former BMW dealership into housing, restaurants and shops.
A representative from Wolff confirmed the farm designs are not part of the actual building plans. However, the real plans do call for rooftop gardens. We’re thinking the more ambitious Weber Thompson plans might be worthy of consideration.
You can learn more about the prototype by attending the SAF’s annual exhibit on Sept. 19th.
