Demolish the Seattle Space Needle

Now that I have your attention...

There have been many battles over landmarks in Seattle, including plans to tear down the Monorail, bulldoze the Pike Place Market, raze Pioneer Square, and demolish the Center House and other 1962 World's Fair relics. In these cases, demolition was headed off by citizens who stepped up with strong arguments and willing investors.


Not all private preservation efforts have been effective. One man's efforts to save the historic ferry, the Kalakala drove him deeply into debt. And preservation and restoration efforts also can take a toll on other valued properties unfortunate enough to stand in their way.

The current plan to do away with the Waterfront Streetcar so the Seattle Art Museum can install a public sculpture garden is so ridiculous, it shocks me to think we even have to discuss it. The streetcar itself was already the subject of a major preservation battle. The decision to consider it a treasure was a no-brainer, and it is one of the jewels that glitter in Seattle's crown.

I usually speak for historic architectural preservation, which has long been a passion of mine. But sometimes I see the wisdom in demolition, and I am not wedded to every single old redbrick building simply because it has history.

But Seattle's history has so far been documented brilliantly by its preservation decisions, from Underground Seattle to the statue of Lenin to the future argument our great-grandchildren will wage over whether to save the EMP or tear the eyesore down. What we save speaks to the identity of Seattle. Our emotional attachments, expressed in monuments, define Seattle.

In the business of real estate development, which can be cutthroat and avaricious, much is made of "street appeal." I want to share a passage here from The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, where he describes his impressions of Seattle in 1956, first from the ferry that brought him to our town, and the next day, from street level:

IN THE DEEPENED DUSK fog ahead the big red neons saying: PORT OF SEATTLE. And suddenly everything Japhy had ever told me about Seattle began to seep into me like cold rain, I could feel it and see it now, and not just think it. It was exactly like he'd said: wet, immense, timbered, mountainous, cold, exhilarating, challenging. The ferry nosed in at the pier on Alaskan Way and immediately I saw the totem poles in old stores and the ancient 1880-style switch goat with sleepy firemen chug chugging up and down the waterfront spur like a scene from my own dreams, the old Casey Jones locomotive of America, the only one I ever saw that old outside of Western movies, but actually working and hauling boxcars in the smoky gloom of the magic city.

I immediately went to a good clean skid row hotel, the Hotel Stevens, got a room for the night for a dollar seventy-five and had a hot tub bath and a good long sleep and in the morning I shaved and walked out First Avenue and accidentally found all kinds of Goodwill stores with wonderful sweaters and red underwear for sale and I had a big breakfast with five-cent coffee in the crowded market morning with blue sky and clouds scudding overhead and waters of Puget Sound sparkling and dancing under old piers. It was real true Northwest.

Kerouac's description is hauntingly accurate for anyone who's lived in the Northwest long enough to experience Seattle on a soulful level. We have lost much of what he described, but our character is much the same.

The waterfront streetcar is one of Seattle's funky little treasures, a thing of "useless beauty." It is one of the cheapest thrills you can get for a buck, getting on board outside the Elliott Bay Bookstore and riding on skinny, hard wooden seats, bell happily dinging away, heading down to the waterfront.

Photo by Steve Ringman, The Seattle Times, 03/11/05

One of my greatest joys is taking the streetcar or going to the Pike Place Market for produce shopping, or visiting the Fremont Troll and watching and listening to the tourists as they oooo and ahhhhh over Seattle. These little things make the difference between a livable city and a strip mall.

Stuart Eskenazi, in today's Seattle Times, reveals that there is a streetcar preservation effort underway:

Walt Crowley, president and executive director of the nonprofit that runs HistoryLink, said City Councilman George Benson, who championed the vintage streetcar line launched in 1982, told him before he died last October that he feared the sculpture garden threatened the future of the streetcar.

"He said, 'I'm counting on you to make sure it doesn't,' " Crowley said. "So that's what we're doing."

The form letter pays tribute to Benson: "Creating a 'choice' between Waterfront Streetcar and sculpture garden is a false dichotomy which can easily be resolved in a way that preserves both and honors the memory and legacy of one of Seattle's most beloved public servants. We urge all parties to find a 'win-win' solution quickly."

More information can be found by going to History Link . Take a moment to go there and read about this important historic preservation effort.