50-story tower will be exuberant addition to downtown Seattle

New 50-story tower project last week will be second-tallest buildingin Seattle. (University of Washington)

The new 50-story office tower planned for thesite of Rainier Square in downtown Seattlehas all the makings ofan instant icon maybe the onlyoffice towerever built to look like a Nancy Sinatra go-go boot.

It is a wild design for one of the most prominent sites in downtown, a building that makes the exuberant public library look downright tame. At a construction cost of a half-billion dollars or more, it will be a demonstration of the citys economic vigor. But one of the best things about it is that it shows architecture cancorrect past mistakes. The new building will wipe out the shopping arcade at the base of the Rainier Tower something thathas been a long time coming.

Few today probably remember the building that once stood on the site, the White-Henry-Stuart, or the public controversy that attended its demolition 40 years ago. I personally remember seeing the building only a few times, craning my neck out the car window as my parents took the family on our annual pilgrimage from Spokane to the Space Needle. But the building lives on in photos, and what a majestic thing it was.

White-Henry-Stuart Building. (Photo by Seattle Times)

It stood 10 or 11 stories, depending on street elevation actually three office buildings joined by a unified brick and terra-cotta faaderunning the length of FourthAvenue between Union and University. Designed to the highest standard of 1908, the ornate White-Henry-Stuart was a signature buildingfor a boomingtime in the city part of a grand, never-finished scheme for a harmonious set of commercial buildings on the 11-acre downtown tract owned by the University of Washington. We can get an idea of what it looked like from the near-mirror-image Cobb Building, still standing across the street at Fourthand University. The Cobb and its twin seemingly formed a gateway on FourthAvenue to the center of town and it certainly made an impression on this kid every visit to the city.

The last remnants of the White-Henry-Stuart Building are cleared from the site in 1977 to make way for Rainier Square. RainierTowertoleft, Cobb Building in background.(Photo bySeattle Times)

The entire block was leveled starting in 1974, after a year-long battle between university regents and arts-and-culture organizations sensitivity toward historic preservation was something new. To be fair, the Rainier Tower that went up at the southeast corner of the block is one of themost memorable Seattle buildings of the period, because of the tapered brandy-snifter base that seems to pop up out of its plaza.

Itwas as if therest of the block, where the striking White-Henry-Stuart once stood, was designed to make Rainier Towerseem more interesting by being so deliberately nondescript.The low-rise Rainier Squareranksamong the dullest, blandest, least-imaginative urban shopping arcades ever built. On the inside it is a rather quiet three-story galleria stroll the corridors at midday and beat the crowds. Several stores sit vacant. Seattle traded the White-Henry-Stuart for this?

Rainier Tower will survive the redesign whileRainier Squarewill gothe way of an obsolete strip mall. The new 50-story tower that will take its place may strike some as outr, the same way the Rainier Tower startled Seattle in the 70s. The building that will rise next door is even more irregular, with a convex curve toward Fifth Avenue that suggests a foot, a divot at the corner of Fourth and University that suggests a heel, and subtle sculpting of the glass walls that suggest this boot was made for walking.

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50-story tower will be exuberant addition to downtown Seattle