Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Smith Tower

ETA: 2/22/07: By coincidence, Smith Tower on the front page the day after I made this post: Seattle Times writes that it may be turned into condominiums.
. . . . . . .

I was speaking about the Smith Tower in my last post. This is the view out of my studio window.

Smith Tower





Once, I covered an event on the very top floor, in the tall pyramid-shaped part. That was fun.

When the building was opened in 1914, it was the forth tallest in the world. One hundred and fifty-nine meters. It's only been washed once I read as, for some reason, it stays exceptionally clean by itself. There is a room on the 35th floor called The Chinese Room. The furniture and many of the fittings and carvings were gifts from the Empress of China. You can take a Virtual Reality tour here.

. . . . .

I did this photo some month's ago. The light was very special. Warm afternoon light with a certain glow, at the same time dark clouds and some blue sky. There was some magic in the air, a kind of a stronger presence of things, as if the objects reach out to you, not just being there in the gray, passively waiting for us to see them.

The blue little globe or ball on top of the tower was lighting up. I never registered that before. Probably catching the light from the sun.


  • My Main Site
  • 1 comment:

    Anonymous said...

    hey ingrid - when i was growing up in seattle, the entire skyline of the city was the smith tower and the space needle. none of the other buildings you can see now between them (for example from the bainbridge ferry) were there. just the arches at the pacific science center. in 1968 the 50-story seattle first national bank building went up (called "the box the space needle came in"), and then in the mid-70s my girlfriend's father (a civil engineer who had been consulted on the project) told us in confidence that someone was going to put up an 80-story building in downtown: the columbia tower. this seemed unbelievable. for 50 years the smith tower was the tallest building west of the mississippi river, until the transamerica building was built in san francisco.

    SISTERS & GIRLFRIENDS - Elena and Chiara

    Today is International Women's Day. I am thinking of how important women's friendships are with their girlfriends and their sisters....