Seattle Walkabout

You're looking at what once was the tallest building west of the Mississippi from the time of its opening in 1914 until 1931.  The Smith Tower remained the tallest building on the West Coast until completion of the Space Needle three decades later.  BTW, Seattle's needle is about 400 feet shorter than the Eiffel Tower, built for a 19th-century world's fair.  Just sayin'. 

Buildings in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood were built to last, that's for sure.  

A sizeable homeless community occupies the leafy neighborhood.

Nineteenth-century architectural details abound especially around the building entrances.

 

Speaking of the Eiffel Tower, the Pioneer Square pergola, where Seattleites could once take shelter while waiting for the cable car and relieve themselves underground, looks positively Parisian.

A bust of Chief Seattle sternly reminds passersby that his tribes--the Duwamish and Suquamish--settled the area although he converted to Christianity in the late 1840s after welcoming white pioneers to his native land.  Seattle anglicizes his indigenous name.  

Tsonqua (Totem), a figure carved by Duane Pasco and donated to the city by a developer, has welcomed visitors since 1987.

Like most great cities, Seattle works to honor its past while looking to the future.  The contrast between old and new is especially striking on Second Avenue.  This remnant from the 1895 Burke Building, which graces the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building plaza,

. . .  is just a block away from the Federal Reserve Bank which installed this Botero statue, created a hundred years later, in 2016.

Modern skyscrapers don't do it for me, but I can't deny this developer's lovely execution of public space.

It's sometimes difficult to distinguish between the ersatz and the authentic.

"Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture" was just about to open at the Seattle Art Museum.  Damn, it would have been right up my alley!

But food markets are right up my alley, too, and Pike Place offers one to rival those I've seen in Europe.

Two nights earlier, I'd stayed in Yakima and gazed in wonder at the fertile hills and farmland near the river of the same name, carpeted with both vineyards and apple tree orchards. Domestic beer drinkers note: nearly all of the nation's hops grows there, too.

Kudzu koffee began right on Pike Place in 1971, the same year I started college!

I also explored Belltown briefly.  

Gay Pride really has established itself as a marketing engine, usually not as subtle or chic as this.  It's sometimes hard to believe that I arrived in New York City just two years after the Stonewall Rebellion when the term was still oxymoronic.

I think I may have seen more African Americans on this wall mural than anywhere else in Seattle.