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Waltham Block
U.S. Historic district Contributing property
The building's exterior, 2007
Location	311-13 S Occidental St Seattle, Washington
Coordinates	47°35′59.36″N 122°19′59.93″W
Built	1892 (1892)
Architect	Warren Skillings James Corner
Architectural style	Romanesque Revival
Part of	Pioneer Square Historic District (ID70000086)
Designated CP	June 22, 1970

The Waltham Block is an historic loft building located on Occidental Way S in Seattle, Washington in the Pioneer Square neighborhood. Built in 1892 by a Massachusetts-based investment company and named after Waltham, Massachusetts, it is representative of the last major wave of reconstruction between the great Seattle fire and the Panic of 1893. It was built specifically to meet the needs of the wholesale trade and helped form the nucleus of Seattle's first wholesale district along Occidental Avenue S. During Pioneer Square's economic low point in the 1930s and 40s the building was converted into a cheap hotel and struggled to maintain commercial occupants. In the 1960s it was one of the first in the neighborhood to be renovated and occupied by office space and art galleries and which still fill the building today. The Waltham Block was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 as a contributing structure to the Pioneer Square Historic District.

History

Prior to the Great Seattle Fire, the lot on which the Waltham Block now stands was occupied by a group of modest frame cottages in the shadow of the Pacific House Hotel to the north. The lot itself was divided between 5 different owners and remained vacant immediately after the fire. Over a year later, on July 1, 1890 all 5 pieces of the lot, now below street level due to regrades, were purchased by M. Harwood Young of the Boston-based New England Northwestern Investment Company, whose local offices were located in the Pioneer Building. Among its local directors was James D. Lowman, of Lowman & Hanford. Young was a major promoter of Seattle and the Northwest in the East, where he claimed Seattle was still largely unknown among the elite of Boston and those who did know of it were calling it "Settle". Despite this Boston was still one of Seattle's biggest sources of investment capital in the 1890s. In Seattle, as well as Tacoma and Fairhaven, Young's company largely dealt with buying and selling residential tracts and constructing houses for their clientele. The Waltham Block represented their largest single investment, built to meet the needs of the growing wholesale grocery trade then centered in Pioneer Square. The architectural partnership of Warren Skillings and James M. Corner were chosen to design the building, which would be named after Young's hometown of Waltham, Massachusetts; the name was once displayed on a cartouche on the building's long-lost pediment. Before work had even started in June of 1892 the Waltham was fully leased by two grocers; the north half to James Cosh & Co. and the south half to Webb & Co., who already occupied the extant Ingels Block to the south. Work was completed by mid-September. In 1893 the Union Trust Building, also designed by Skillings and Corner, was constructed to the north to meet further demand for wholesale spaces, completing the block between Main and Jackson streets.

Richard White in front of his gallery, 1968

The New England Northwestern Investment Co. sold the Waltham Block in September 1905 to investors Silas Archibald and Ben S. Downing for $71,000. At this time the building was occupied by Melse & Gottfried and George B. Adair & Son, the local Fairbanks-Morse agent. Archibald would turn around and sell the building in June 1907 for $90,000 to capitalists N.A. Sanborn and J.W. McCleod, representing an un-named out of town party. The building was owned by real estate developer W.A. Anderson in the 1910s and for a time was known as the Anderson Building. The building continued to house various grocery and hardware wholesalers throughout the 1900s and later machine shops and and precision instrument dealers, but by the early 1930s the Pioneer Square neighborhood was in decline as most wholesale businesses had either moved north to Western Avenue or south to the reclaimed tide flats, now known as SoDo. In about 1930 the Waltham's upper floors were converted into the Liberty Hotel which, reflecting the state of the neighborhood at the time, housed a number of colorful characters and would experience a fair share of domestic disputes, robberies and even murders. By 1934 there was only 1 remaining industrial tenant in the building, a shirt manufacturer, and by 1939 the ground floor was completely vacant and would remain for several years. In 1944 the Pacific Coast Export Company, later the R.L. Cook Sales & Supply Co. opened up shop selling army surplus supplies. A variety of short term tenants came and went until the late 1950s including an employment office for Alaskan canneries, the Olive Branch Mission and a junk store.

By the 1960s as the historic qualities of Pioneer Square and "Old Seattle Square" (as the area to the south was once referred) were beginning to be realized, and preservationists and artists began to move into and revive the district's dilapidated buildings. Among these modern pioneers was Richard H. White, a Montana native who had previously owned the Kiana Lodge at Agate Pass. As historic buildings in the neighborhood were still being demolished for parking lots he leased and refurbished the Waltham Building in 1966 and opened the first of several art galleries that would occupy the building, known simply as The Gallery and later as White's Occidental Gallery and later still the Foster/White Gallery. Other posh tenants would follow including John Denman's Colony Frames, Virginia Wright's Current Editions gallery and Interiors International, a furniture store. In 1970 the neighborhood was finally listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the following year Occidental Way was closed to traffic and converted into a pedestrian mall. In April 1980 a fire caused by a lightbulb placed too close to a couch destroyed the furniture store but thanks to the close proximity to the fire station, was put out before it could threaten the rest of the building. Later that year the American Art Gallery, Seattle's first to focus on Western and turn of the century American art, was opened by Chic Edwards. 313 Occidental was occupied by several night clubs in the 1970s and 80s, the first being Parnell's jazz club. Parnell's was later known as Ernestine's (operated by Ernestine Anderson) then the Three Thirteen which hosted countless jazz luminaries. In 1986 the Davidson Gallery moved in and remains there to the current day. That same year 311's current tenant, the Glasshouse Studio also opened.

Notes

Category:Commercial buildings completed in 1892]] Category:Commercial buildings in Seattle]] Category:Pioneer Square, Seattle]] Category:1892 establishments in Washington (state)]]

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Lyon Building

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The Lyon Building, Seattle

• ... that an attempt to dynamite the Lyon Building (pictured) in Seattle, Washington was made in 1910 by James McNamara, one month before he would commit the Los Angeles Times bombing? Source: "You are strongly encouraged to quote the source text supporting each hook" (and [link] the source, or cite it briefly without using citation templates)

5x expanded by Publichall (talk). Self-nominated at 21:40, 18 February 2021 (UTC).

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