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Only a few corners in today's downtown Seattle are devoted neither to making money nor to celebrating those who have a lot of it. One of these is the YWCA, whose '30s-era building still bears two pairs of terra-cotta reliefs honoring women's strength (symbolized by a warrior woman with a shield) and women's wisdom (symbolized by a seated woman reading, deep in contemplation). While the current YWCA logo emphasizes the "W" in the organization's name, nobody's likely to confuse this handsome brick building with the stark-black W Hotel just down the street.
The Olympic Hotel, built in 1923, used to advertise itself as "the hotel Seattle calls home." It was THE place for important business meetings, posh wedding receptions, and stays by government dignitaries. It was also the original flagship of a regional chain, Western Hotels, which after several corporate morphings became Westin and which sold the Olympic in 1980 to Canada's Four Seasons chain. It's now officially called the Four Seasons Olympic. Northwest old-timers still call it "the Olympic" for short; only clueless newbies (and the hotel's management) call it "the Four Seasons."
Amid today's hoopla over the proposed "world class" new downtown library, one may forget the library we have now was originally thought the most modern thing one could imagine. It had replaced a grandiose old Carnegie-funded structure which, by the early '50s, was considered too small and too worn-down. Instead of the old library's bricks and pillars and a neo-classical facade, we got a structure of clean lines, neutral pastel colors, bright fluorescent lighting, and the same "efficient" construction methods that have helped make all of downtown Seattle's government-built buildings of the period into prematurely collapsing eyesores.
Amid the classic gas-station signs adorning the General Petroleum Museum on Pine Street is one vertical sign advertising not gas but "V-I-D-E-O." It's a remnant of the video store that used to be in the building's street-level storefront, where a couple of retro furnishings shops stand now. The sign was refitted in the '80s; it originally spelled out R-A-F-F-'S, the name of a shoe store previously in the space. A horizontal Raff's sign has been moved to the building's roof; you can see a portion of its script letters from certain angles the streets below.
Copyright 2001 Clark Humphrey,
clark@speakeasy.org.
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