Located at the crossroads of four important downtown neighborhoods (Commercial District, International District, Stadium District, and Pioneer Square), King Street Station has served as a hub for transportation and city development for more than 100 years. The station was constructed between 1904 and 1906 for James J. Hill’s Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads. The station was designed by Reed and Stem, the same firm that designed New York City’s famous Grand Central Terminal. King Street Station was the first of two train stations constructed at the edge of the city’s original commercial district in the early twentieth century. The other was Union Station, built by rival Edward Henry Harriman in 1910-1911 for Harriman’s Oregon-Washington Railway, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific. The construction of the King Street Station signaled Seattle’s triumph in a competition between Seattle, Tacoma, Port Townsend, and Mukilteo to serve as the Puget Sound’s major U.S. railroad terminus.[1]

Both King Street Station and Union Station were built on “reclaimed” tidal flats, filled during excavation of Seattle’s regrading projects. The station’s site had the advantage of not only sitting just at the edge of the city’s commercial center at a time of significant economic growth for Seattle, but also easy access to cargo ships, warehouses, and transit sheds (such as Pier 54) at the Elliott Bay waterfront.[2]

The station contributed to a major tunnel project, the Great Northern Tunnel, which ran from the station north to Railroad Avenue and opened in 1905. Much like contemporary proponents of the State Road 99 tunnel, advocates for the Great Northern Tunnel justified their project by claiming it would improve access, create less noise, and contribute to safer travel.[3]

King Street Station’s clock tower made the station the tallest building in Seattle until the completion of Smith Tower in 1914. The rest of the building is three stories, faced in granite and red brick, with a terra cotta tile roof. Remodels in 1950 and 1964 gutted the station’s ornamented plaster interior, but the building was restored in four phases between 2008 and 2013 to reproduce its original appearance, to comply with Seattle’s Sustainable Building Mandate, and to ensure the building could withstand earthquakes.[4]

Credits and Sources:

Description by Madison Heslop on behalf of the American Society for Environmental History.

AMTRAK. “Seattle, WA (SEA).” The Great American Stations, n.d.http://www.greatamericanstations.com/Stations/SEA.

“Summary for 301 S Jackson ST S / Parcel ID 5247801160.”Seattle.gov, 2004.http://web6.seattle.gov/DPD/HistoricalSite/QueryResult.aspx?ID=1657836700.

Williams, David B. Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015.