MISCmedia for 12/14/99
Bank Shots

HERE'S A THIRD SET of recycled real-estate mini-essays. The theme this time is relics of bank mergers, something with which readers across the country can identify.

The recent retirement of the "Seafirst Bank" brand by Bank of America means the end of what had been the dominant name in Washington banking since the pioneer days, when Dexter Horton ran a private storefront bank with a single safe in the back. Horton's company was the oldest of several that merged by the 1930s into Seattle-First National Bank. Its standardized branch-bank design of the late '40s, best seen at the 6th and Denny branch, is a classic of neighborhood-retail architecture.

This early-'60s bank branch at 3rd and Wall was a monument to car-culture--the entire ground level is drive-up booths and parking, plus an escalator to the raised walk-in building. It's also a monument to the industry consolidations of the past 15 years. It began as a unit of National Bank of Commerce, which changed its name to Rainier Bank. Then, thanks to mergers, it became in turn a part of Security Pacific Bank, WestOne Bank, the Portland-based U.S. Bank, and the Minnesota-based Firstbank Systems (which kept the U.S. Bank name but changed the logo).

America's cities are strewn with the former main-office towers of local and regional banks that have since been merged or sold. A three-block radius of 4th & Union in downtown Seattle contains the former Pacific First Federal Building (now U.S. Bank Centre), Puget Sound Bank Plaza (now Puget Sound Plaza), Rainier Bank Tower (now Rainier Square), and this, the former HQ of Peoples Bank ("Member FDIC and the Human Race"), now refitted as a Cavanaugh's Hotel. A few blocks south are the former Seattle Trust Court (now Marion Court) and the former Seafirst Columbia Center (now Bank of America Tower).

I once worked as an office temp on the 13th floor of the Rainier Bank Tower (now Rainier Square), just as the bank was preparing to merge out of existence. The concrete pedastel contains storage rooms and heating/plumbing equipment, saving space on the upper floors for more office room. Built in '75, it replaced a stately lo-rise structure, the White-Henry-Stuart Building. The surviving Cobb Medical Building across 4th Ave. is a shortened replica of the WHS Building's old full-block design, and preserves an old WHS Indian-head gargoyle in its facade.

The Seattle Times is known among local insiders as "Fairview Fanny," from the handsome Fairview Ave. building it's occupied since 1930. Before that, the paper had a smaller, triangular building at 5th & Stewart, still known as Times Square. Its front entrance was gussied-up a little in the '80s, when Washington Mutual Savings Bank opened a branch on the ground floor. Last year, the bank branch moved across the street to the Pacific Place mall (built on the former site of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's pre-1948 building); allowing the stoic Times Square facade to now be used for the selling of golf clubs.

TOMORROW: Bad Xmas gift and card ideas.

ELSEWHERE:

• Could socialism have worked if it had started someplace other than Russia?...
• You knew this would show up: The Microsoft Monopoly game!...

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Some bad beers I have known.
• In the Brave New Seattle, every new building must be monumental, "world class," and tastefully outlandish.
• Imagining life after Microsoft, and exploring the roots of the Gates personality cult.
• The first and second parts of our visit to an imagined Northwest theme park.
• Parts one, two, three, and four of our WTO protest post-mortem; a list of WTO-protest links; and the earlier preview piece.
• The "new secessionists" somehow think business still has too little power vs. government.
• The new Coldwater Creek store sells the fantasy of living on the land but not off it; while the new Ballard Fred Meyer hypermarket tries to look like the steel plant it replaced.
• Parts one, two, and three of a look back at Ed Bellamy's Looking Backward, which promised that by now we'd have complete socio-economic equality but not computers.
• Imagining a newspaper for the Net age.
• Some of today's more perverse, ephemeral "art forms."
• I still kvetch about arrogant San Francisco; but is Seattle now no better?
• Can you tell me how to get to Coronation Street?

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