Non-Tourist Seattle Pictures

[editor]

Here are some photos I took wandering around Seattle's Belltown neighborhood and a couple of other places one day. Belltown has a lot of great historic buildings, which until the recession hit, were being rapidly replaced by new hipster condo blocks. The place has a ton of potential, and is one of the big restaurant/bar/club areas of Seattle. But it could use some more people so that some of those neglected historic buildings get reused.

This is Facebook's new Seattle headquarters, and its first office outside of Silicon Valley.

KIRO Television (CBS) Note the earthquake cross-braces added to the building later.

The Qwest building's brick facade is carved with scenes from Seattle's history.

Not taken from Belltown, but I took these the same day, so they're part of the same batch.

The McGuire building was only a few years old when the city condemned it earlier this year. The city says it's unsafe and could fall over at any second. The owners have their own experts who say it's not true. Either way, the people who lived there had just a couple of days notice from the city to GTFO. Now it's covered in scaffolding to protect people in case it starts coming apart the way the city predicts.

[kylejack]

Cool.

I've only seen that brick carving stuff in a few places, most recently the Hilton Anatole in Dallas.

[lockmat]

nice, pretty cool stuff

[editor]

Thanks. Of the 396 pictures I shot, very few are worth showing. Lots of beautiful buildings screwed up by phone lines, tacky bar signs, ads for multiple sclerosis ("Are you sad? It could be MS!"), and hillbilly lifted pick-em-up trucks.

[lockmat]

Thanks. Of the 396 pictures I shot, very few are worth showing. Lots of beautiful buildings screwed up by phone lines, tacky bar signs, ads for multiple sclerosis ("Are you sad? It could be MS!"), and hillbilly lifted pick-em-up trucks.

Those photos may not be worth selling, but aren't they "non-tourist" type pictures? Of all cities, we should be able to embrace those types.

[tanith27]

Was just up there this past weekend. Stayed at the Fairmont downtown. Don't have the picture handy, but there is this really cool building across the street from it. Looks almost like any other high rise, except the base somewhat resembles an inverted pyramid. Assuming its quake proof, but I wouldn't want to test that out by standing underneath it.

Its a beautiful city and is very alive even on weekends. Something I wish we had here.

[LegacyTree]

Really enjoy these flix from the Seattle area. If I ever had the chance to move up there I'd go in a heartbeat.

[editor]

Was just up there this past weekend. Stayed at the Fairmont downtown. Don't have the picture handy, but there is this really cool building across the street from it. Looks almost like any other high rise, except the base somewhat resembles an inverted pyramid. Assuming its quake proof, but I wouldn't want to test that out by standing underneath it.

Its a beautiful city and is very alive even on weekends. Something I wish we had here.

You're talking about the Rainier Tower. Here's a page from our sister site, PNW Architecture.

I have some fantastic pictures of it that I haven't published yet, but should in the next couple of weeks.

The guy who designed it did it as practice before doing the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York.

The tapered base is necessary to preserve sight lines and light to some of the historic buildings on adjacent blocks, like The Cobb, and the Fairmont Olympic Hotel that you stayed in.

Interestingly, most of the land in that area, including the land that your hotel and the Rainier Tower are on is owned by the University of Washington. Your hotel is on the location of where the University originally was before it got moved to the north.

Even though the college moved, it retained ownership of the land, all of which became the core of downtown, and leases on that land help fund the school.

It also means that when the university wanted to develop the Rainier Tower, it was able to demolish a whole bunch of historic buildings. The state supreme court ruled that the University's right to develop the land trumped the city's zoning and historic preservation ordinances because the University is a state institution.

Really sorry I don't have any of my photos at hand (I'm not near my archive drives), but here's one from Wikimopedia that doesn't really do it justice:

But you can at least see the tapering at the bottom where the building narrows to make room for the mall that surrounds it.

[editor]

Really enjoy these flix from the Seattle area. If I ever had the chance to move up there I'd go in a heartbeat.

It's been something of a disappointment. Seattle is a beautiful place to visit, but living here is turning out to be something else. Frasier was a big fat lie.

[Fred]

I have traveled all over the U.S. and my favorite trip was to Bellevue, WA. just outside Seattle. People were nice even though they laughted at my southern accent, it did not rain for the 90 days I was there and the music scene was like Austin on steroids. I hope I get to visit there again!