Smith Tower
Smith Tower, named for typewriter and rifle manufacturer Lyman Cornelius Smith, attests to Seattle’s Pacific connections in the early twentieth century, including both relations across the ocean with China and across the porous border with Canada.
At time of completion in 1914, the Smith Tower was the tallest building west of the Mississippi and the fourth tallest in the world. Designed by Gaggin and Gaggin, a firm from Syracuse, New York, the building’s cost of construction exceeded $1.25 million.[1] Much of the lavish budget went to ensuring the tower contained all the most modern conveniences, including telephone, telegraph, wireless, and cable offices as well as lavatories on every floor. Pedrara onyx paneled the main lobby interior, while the upper floor lobbies were covered in marble.[2]
The most ornate room in the Smith Tower continues to be the Chinese Room, located on the 35th floor. The room’s original carved wood and porcelain ceiling, blackwood furniture, and 17th-century silk paintings were gifts from China’s Dowager Empress Cixi to the Smiths.[3]
Recent renovations added a speakeasy to the 35th floor in recognition of the Tower’s more illicit Prohibition-era history.[4] In the 1920s, rumrunners such as Roy Olmstead smuggled immense quantities of alcohol purchased in Vancouver, B.C, through the Strait of Juan de Fuca into Seattle, evading pirates as well as federal agents.[5]
The legacy of the Great Fire of 1889 continued to impress Seattle residents well into the twentieth century. Smith Tower was widely advertized as “absolutely fireproof,” featuring a fireproofed steal frame, metal interior doors and trim finished to look like mahogany, bronze window frames, and a bright terra-cotta exterior.[6]
[1] “Smith, L.C., Tower, Pioneer Square, Seattle, WA,” Pacific Coast Architectural Database (2007), http://pcad.lib.washington.edu/building/4149/.
[2] “Summary for 502 2nd Ave / Parcel ID 0939000060,” Seattle.gov (2004), http://web6.seattle.gov/DPD/HistoricalSite/QueryResult.aspx?ID=1241706640
[3] “Smith, L.C., Tower.”
[4] Mike Rosenberg, “Smith Tower Observation Deck to Reopen with Speakeasy,” The Seattle Times, June 2, 2016, accessed August 11, 2016, http://www.seattletimes.com/business/smith-tower-observation-deck-to-reopen-with-speakeasy/.
[5] Norman H. Clark, “Roy Olmstead, a Rumrunning King on Puget Sound,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 54, no. 3 (July 1963), 91.
[6] “Summary for 502 2nd Ave.”
Credits and Sources:
Description by Madison Heslop on behalf of the American Society for Environmental History.
Clark, Norman H. “Roy Olmstead, a Rumrunning King on Puget Sound.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 54, no. 3 (July 1963): 89-103.
“Rosenberg, Mike. " Smith Tower Observation Deck to Reopen with Speakeasy." Seattle Times, June 2, 2016. Accessed August 11, 2016. http://www.seattletimes.com/business/smith-tower-observation-deck-to-reopen-with-speakeasy/.
“Smith, L.C., Tower, Pioneer Square, Seattle, WA.” Pacific Coast Architectural Database. 2007. http://pcad.lib.washington.edu/building/4149/.
“Summary for 502 2nd AVE / Parcel ID 0939000060.”Seattle.gov, 2004. http://web6.seattle.gov/DPD/HistoricalSite/QueryResult.aspx?ID=1241706640.
