(click to enlarge photos)
Published in The Seattle Times on-line on July 25, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on July 28, 2024
We still can get ‘stretchitis’ from beholding the tippy-top of the 1914 Smith Tower
By Jean Sherrard
Oh, to have been a fly on that wall in 1909 when firearm and typewriter magnate Lyman Cornelius Smith of Syracuse, N.Y., proposed building a 14-story skyscraper in Seattle. His son Burns, 29, must have nodded patiently before dropping an inspired bombshell.
“Let’s supersize it,” urged the younger Smith (here, of course, we paraphrase). What better promotion for a maker of office machines, he reportedly said, than a record-breaking office building? Rivaling Manhattan’s Singer, Metropolitan and Woolworth buildings — then the world’s tallest — would be front-page news nationwide.
What’s more, Burns reminded his father that speculator John Hoge already had begun planning his own 18-story high-rise. A significantly taller Smith column might thumb its nose at Hoge’s lesser stack for years to come. Fiercely competitive, Lyman Smith gave a hearty thumbs up.
From the get-go, the Smiths applied their powers of persuasion, Lyman dazzling the Seattle City Council with grand visions. The council formally resolved that city government buildings would remain within a four-block radius of the Smith property, clinching its central location and future relevance. A supportive Mayor Hiram Gill made sure that building permits were quickly granted.
A Syracuse architectural firm, Gaggins and Gaggins, completed plans for the $1.5 million steel and concrete edifice — a 21-floor base topped by a 14-floor tower and pyramidal cone that contained, claimed its builders, seven additional (if improbable) floors, for a fish-tale total of 42 stories.
On Nov. 5, 1910, before construction began, the 60-year-old elder Smith died unexpectedly after a short illness. A Seattle Times obituary lauded his “quick insight into the heart of things” and investment of a third of his fortune in “the future possibilities and present desirability of this city.”
His structure climbed to the sky. Crowds of admiring Seattleites (dubbed “sidewalk superintendents”) gaped upward, marveling at “cowboys of the air” who attached glazed terra-cotta panels. A local doctor warned that neck injuries might increase. Wags competed to name potential ailments. Top contenders: “crickitus,” “stretchitis” and “rubberosis.”
Come dedication day, July 4, 1914, Burns Smith welcomed thousands to his “cloud cleaver,” at 522 feet, the tallest in the West. The “gleaming white pile,” said the Times, represented “the confidence … which typifies Seattle spirit and growth.”
At its crest, an 8-foot-wide globe of glass and bronze “flashed the hour and quarter hour in red, white and blue.” Mariners approaching across Puget Sound proclaimed the newly minted icon “a beacon to the world.”
Although it’s dwarfed today by modern giants, can anyone say that the Smith Tower, having just marked its 110th anniversary, has lost any of its opening luster?
WEB EXTRAS
For a narrated 360 degree video of this column, please click here!
Thanks for the great “Then” photo, I’d been searching for one that shows the building housing “Jaffe & Co.” which was located at 115-117 2nd Ave. South. In the photo, you can see their sign just to the left of the base of the Smith Tower as Jaffe & C0. was a major liquor dealer in Pre-Prohibition Seattle.
A bit of the Companies history: Established in Healdsburg, California on June 26, 1886 Mr. Louis Jaffe purchased the Pridham Vineyards comprising of 264 acres of wine and brandy grapes. The firm began business in Seattle on August 4, 1889, just months after the great fire had swept the city. Circumstances forced Jaffe to set up at a location on what was then known as Old Mill Street just above Third Avenue South in a 15×70 ft tent. It was around 1893 that the firm began to show up in city listings and its business was closely tied in with the Imperial Liquor Company whose owner was Joseph L. Jaffe. Throughout its existence it was both a retail and wholesale establishment located at 115-117 Second Avenue South. Jaffe & Co. also owned a saloon in Spokane and a retail/wholesale location from 1892-1915 which closed due to Prohibition.