Quo vadis?

Cobb Building

 Walking downtown earlier today, I stood at the corner of Fourth and University, waiting for the light to change, when my eye was caught by the sight of the Cobb Building on the opposite corner.  Nothing unusual about it -- I've passed it a million times.  But I took the time to photograph it.

The Cobb Building is the last remnant of a number of similarly designed buildings on Fourth Avenue, all built on property owned by the University of Washington -- the University's original downtown campus.  The Cobb was completed in 1910.  The White and Henry Buildings, on the opposite side of Fourth, were completed in 1909, and a third building -- the Stuart -- completed that side of Fourth between University and Union Streets in 1915.  The three buildings were generally considered a single building -- the White-Henry-Stuart Building.


White-Henry Stuart Building
From corner of Union and Fourth

As the Cobb suggests, even today, the façade of the WHS Building was impressive, solid, and seriously conservative.  It demonstrated that Seattle was no longer a frontier town, but a well-established business community.
I remember the WHS well, because my first office as an attorney was in the much more modern Washington Building, adjacent to the Cobb Building, and my office looked out across Fourth to the brown, monolithic exterior of the WHS.  I liked it.  It told me I was working in an important downtown community -- not in an office in a strip mall.

The WHS was torn down in 1977 to make way for Rainier Square and, facing Fifth Avenue, the 41-story Rainier Bank Building (sometimes described as a sharpened pencil balanced on its  lead end).  As the building's occupants were moving out, a sign appeared, facing my office.  "Quo Vadis, Seattle?"  Latin.  "Where are you going, Seattle?"  I also wondered that, as I watched each day from my window as the austerely beautiful office buildings were pulled apart, razed, and leveled.

Rainier Square, which replaced the WHS Building, was a nicely finished, very modern, two-story building.  In its center was an enclosed atrium surrounded by retail establishments.  The atrium had a grand piano that someone often played during lunch hour.  A tunnel led from the bottom floor of Rainier Square underneath Fifth Avenue to the Fifth Avenue Theater (also on University property); the tunnel was lined with interesting photos of Seattle's early history.  In this paragraph, I've told you everything that was -- to me -- worth knowing about the new mall.  And that's what Rainier Square was -- a covered mall.

Rainier Square always seemed a bit empty.  My feeling was, and is, that it never quite jelled.

Planned Rainier
Square Building.
Rainier Tower to its
left.

What goes around, comes around.  Rainier Square will soon be demolished.  The pencil-shaped Rainier Tower will remain.  The rest of the block will be totally redeveloped.  On Fourth Avenue there will be a 12-story hotel.  Between Fourth and Fifth, facing Union Street, developers plan to build an oddly shaped, 58-story "Rainier Square Tower," on top of something similar to the existing low-rise mall. 
The two new buildings together will occupy the ground where the White-Henry-Stuart Building once stood.

The developer quite correctly observes that the building's shape will call to mind a ski jump.  Quo vadis, Seattle?

In the years leading up to the beginning of my law career, Seattle had hungered for respectability.  Now, the city's eager for excitement.  A building that resembles a ski jump may help satisfy that eagerness.  Maybe.  Or it may just look exciting in the same sense as the Shanghai skyline looks exciting, or as the Las Vegas strip strikes some as exciting.

But I keep an open mind.  Seattle has done a lot of things that caused me to raise my eyebrows, many of which I've learned to like.  If I'd been old enough to be crotchety, I probably would have complained about the Space Needle!

But, still,  it's nice to have the Cobb Building to remind us of a different Seattle, the post-pioneer Seattle that once was.  New York itself probably wishes it still had a small remnant of Penn Station left to admire.