The Smith Tower

The Smith Tower boasts the title of Oldest Skyscraper in Seattle. When it first opened, in 1914, it was also one of the tallest buildings in the country outside of New York. It was built with steel from Pennsylvania and white terracotta from California, with bronze window frames, and Alaskan marble and Mexican onyx in its high-speed elevators. If you want to impress your customers, the reasoning went, build an office building they won't forget.

This reasoning was par for the course in New York at the turn of the century. The Singer Sewing Machine skyscraper, finished in 1908, was 612 feet tall. The Metropolitan Life Insurance skyscraper, completed in 1909, reached 675 feet. The F.W. Woolworth skyscraper, which took until 1913, took first prize at 792 feet. Practically speaking, it wasn't necessary. But as an expression of sheer virility and commercial clout such height was priceless.

The story of the Smith Tower, which stands 462 feet high, is rather more endearing. Lyman Cornelius Smith, of Smith & Wesson firearms and Smith Corona typewriters, visited Seattle in 1909, returning to New York with sensible plans for a 14-story structure. On his return, however, he discovered that his son Burns Lyman Smith had been studying skyscrapers, and was determined they should stop at no less than a 21-story building topped with a 20-story tower.

The combined enthusiasm of wife and son was quite sufficient to convince Smith senior. Their architects, Gaggin & Gaggin, were in due course presented with plans for a 42-story skyscraper topped with a gothic pyramid modeled on the Metropolitan Life Insurance building in New York, itself modeled on the Campanile San Marco in Venice. The fact that neither Smiths nor Gaggins had ever built anything taller than five stories was no deterrence; on the contrary, Burns modestly vowed that it would be finished "as finely as money and brains know how."

When the Smith Tower eventually opened, two years behind schedule, it did not quite reach the soaring 522-foot height and 42 stories that Burns had promised. At 462 feet, it had 36 floors, 33 of which were rentable office space, plus a caretaker's apartment, oriental function room with observation deck, and pyramid. It was proudly compared to the 476-foot Great Pyramid of Giza, and its neoclassical styling and gleaming white terracotta made it a striking building - albeit slightly oddly proportioned, resembling a "long-necked giraffe" for Seattle design critic John Pastier. More enthusiastic than refined, perhaps; but undoubtedly charismatic.