Author Archives: John M Feit

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Street Critic | A second Capitol Hill-style classic car field report

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(Image: John Feit)

Yes, cars are evil. Cars are wicked. But they are designed, and some (too few) are well-designed. And regardless of its conveyor, design matters, and some of the best talent over the last 100 years and more have designed cars (the poor souls). So, at the risk of offending many by lionizing automotive design, here is the second (occasional) installment of Capitol Hill’s Classic Rides.

There is something about the late 1960’s and 1970’s design that is both troubling and inspiring. Beginning to free itself of the constraints of Modernism, it was an era where doctrinaire design loosened, and a more personal expression was emerging. At the threshold of 1980’s post-Modernism, the 70’s have just a bit of that later era’s personal flair here and a little naughtiness there. But unlike the disaster that followed, design was still properly constrained. This awkward juxtaposition of opiating the masses with high-design ideals is well-captured in many of that era’s automobiles (think of the AMC Pacer) and coincided with the emergence of Japanese automotive design in the US. Still a relatively minor player at the beginning of the 70’s, the Japanese sought their own aesthetic, and the 70’s design free-for-all provided the perfect canvas to differentiate themselves in a market dominated by the Big Three.

This Toyota Corona is as good an example as one may find of this aesthetic. Continue reading →

Street Critic | Our neighborhood series: Inform Interiors

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Inform Interiors is located at 1526 Bellevue Ave. You can learn more at informinteriors.design.

The Street Critic is an occasional CHS special featuring architectural and design observations from the built environments on and around Capitol Hill. This special neighborhood series has been created to highlight features of some of the area’s most important gathering places as restaurants, bars, cafes, and shops face unprecedented challenges during the ongoing pandemic. Is there a space you would like us to feature? Let us know in the comments.

 

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Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 🖤 

 
 

Street Critic | Our neighborhood series: Mamnoon

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Mamnoon is located at 1508 Melrose. You can learn more at mamnoonrestaurant.com.

The Street Critic is an occasional CHS special featuring architectural and design observations from the built environments on and around Capitol Hill. This special neighborhood series has been created to highlight features of some of the area’s most important gathering places as restaurants, bars, cafes, and shops face unprecedented challenges during the ongoing pandemic. Is there a space you would like us to feature? Let us know in the comments.

 

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE

Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 🖤 

 
 

Street Critic | On 13th Ave, Onion Dome mysteries revealed

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13th Ave’s St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral (Image: John Feit)

Regardless of how modest the structure, ecclesiastical architecture has a unique expressive ability. No better example of simple forms melded with powerful symbolism exists on Capitol Hill than St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral, on 13th Ave between Howell and Olive. The simplest of brick boxes, the church relies on exotic details and forms to announce its Orthodox beliefs, setting it apart from all other churches in the neighborhood. Continue reading →

Street Critic: Eastlake’s Mid-Century Masterworks

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The Eastlake neighborhood is only five blocks west of Volunteer Park but its even closer proximity to Lake Union makes it a neighborhood quite different than Capitol Hill. Highlighting this difference are buildings representative of Eastlake’s commercial and maritime heritage which range from small, jewel-box like office buildings to large industrial structures.

Eastlake engages Lake Union in a variety of ways including seven ‘streetend parks’, such as Lynn Street Park. The streetends give one a chance to launch a Kayak, play catch with your dog, or simply to watch boats and seaplanes skim the lake’s surface. Some folks are so captivated by such water-borne activities that they have decided to live on the water, making Eastlake’s houseboat community the largest in Seattle.

Continue reading →

Street Critic | 17th Ave is as good as it gets

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The Barbara Frietchie

The Barbara Frietchie

Great urban landscapes are typically comprised of a collection of good buildings and landscapes instead of superlative singular designs. 17th Ave, between E. Union and E. Spring, is just such a landscape and warrants a visit. On this stretch of 17th, one will find a half dozen apartment buildings which individually may stir only a passing (if admiring) glance, yet as an ensemble are a gift to behold. Many of the buildings were built (and perhaps designed?) by the same developer, Samuel Anderson, in the 1920s.

The most conspicuous of the apartments, owing both to its advantageous corner location at the intersection of 17th and E Spring and to its equally proud corner entry, is The Barbara Frietchie. It is one of the very few co-ops in Seattle. More common in New York City, co-ops were a form of apartment ownership that pre-dates condominiums. Perhaps its New York roots account for its being the most visible – ostentatious, even – of the bunch? Its unique quarter-round entry portico set in a subtractive corner is another feature that hints of its big-city aspirations. Continue reading →

Street Critic | A visit to Roanoke, an island of North Capitol Hill floating beyond 520

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Stay-in-place has had a tremendous impact on us all, forcing changes in routines that affect travel, employment, recreation, socialization, as well as physical and mental well-being. It does, however, offer us opportunities often overlooked as we tend to our normal lives. One of the best is taking a fresh look at the landscape around us and exploring overlooked places close to home. One such overlooked place for many of us who live on Capitol Hill includes the Roanoke neighborhood. Had Highway 520 not been built this neighborhood would be squarely within neighborhood consciousness.

Having recently walked (again and again) Pike/Pine, Broadway, Volunteer, and Cal Anderson Parks, as well as 12th, 15th, and 19th Avenues, it seemed a good time to head north and reacquaint myself with what lies just beyond 520. Continue reading →

Street Critic | The Diabolical Diagonal — the architecture of the angled streets that climb Capitol Hill

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Capitol Hill streets and building parcels are almost uniformly delineated by an orthogonal grid; however, when confronted with the second part of our neighborhood’s name the ubiquitous grid revealed its limitation as an all-inclusive planning tool and left city planners little choice but to utilize diagonal streets to ascend and descend our heights. Diagonal streets present a foil to the well-ordered grid, yet most buildings conform to the grid even when the site is an unconventional shape. There are reasons to stay square when designing a building, but design opportunities are sacrificed when the only nod given to an atypical, non-orthogonal site is to design an orthogonal building and treat its diagonally bounded site simply as a remainder to be ‘planted-up’.

The Hill’s longest and steepest diagonal street, Belmont Avenue, exhibits a variety of design solutions to the grid’s disruptive diagonal. The first approach, illustrated in two variants below, plays to both diagonal and grid in a manner that preserves the conflicting geometries. The third solution is a rarely seen hybrid approach where the geometries of grid and diagonal are blended and create unexpectedly complex forms. which gave us a pair of delightful mid-century apartments. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill Community Post | Lid I-5 Open House: Wednesday July 17 5:30 – 7:30 the Summit on Pike 420 E Pike St

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What would you do with 15 acres of new public land in Seattle? You’re invited to share your vision and hear project updates at the Lid I-5 Community Open House on Wednesday, July 17. Doors open at 5:30 PM and there will be a brief program starting at 6:00, which will include Seattle City Councilmembers Bagshaw and Pacheco. Light refreshments will be available.

Click here for more event info and free registration. The event is also on Facebook. The address is: 420 E Pike St, Seattle, WA 98122

30 percent of Seattle’s growth has been confined to three percent of its land in the Center City, without similar growth in resources like parks, affordable housing, and community centers. The airspace about Interstate 5 is likely the last place we can expand public land, and at the same time, we can reduce the environmental impacts of freeway traffic. Seattle has lidded freeways before with Freeway Park and the Convention Center, and so have dozens of other cities like Dallas, Washington, D.C., New York, San Diego, and Boston.

The Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) is now studying the engineering and economics of lidding I-5 between Madison Street and Denny Way, prompted by the multiyear advocacy efforts of the Lid I-5 Steering Committee. Click here to visit OPCD’s project webpage. The July 17 open house will have an update from Lid I-5, OPCD and its consultant team, and remarks by two Seattle councilmembers.

If you can’t attend the event, the best way to stay updated is by joining the Lid I-5 mailing list and our social media. Learn more at www.lidi5.org.

Street Critic | Navigating E Olive Way’s terrain

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Olive Way’s Flatiron

A charm of living in a hilly city like Seattle is witnessing how the street grid and the buildings they define adapt to challenging topography. A typical adaptation is to have streets break from the prevailing orthogonal grid by introducing a diagonal street that makes a hill easier to ascend. In the early 20th Century, Manhattan’s Fuller Building became – and most likely remains – the most celebrated example of a building’s form adapted to an adjacent diagonal street (albeit in dead-flat Manhattan). Today it is known as the Flatiron Building, a reference to its resembling an early type of clothes iron. Capitol Hill has its share of buildings which have adapted to challenging street grinds and terrain. An inspiring pair are found on Olive Way as it cuts a diagonal between Denny and Howell. Continue reading →