Smith Tower
— the city's first skyscraper, still standing.
Not only on a wall.
“Before the Space Needle, before the cranes, there was Smith Tower. White terra cotta, a pyramid of green copper at the top, 38 stories that held the title of tallest building west of the Mississippi for seventeen years. The neighbourhood around it kept its scale; the cast-iron pergola at First and Yesler, the brick streets, the old fire station. The tower looks like it was built to outlast the city around it, which so far is what has happened.
Smith Tower, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Smith Tower stands at 506 Second Avenue in Pioneer Square, Seattle's oldest neighborhood. It opened July 4, 1914, financed by L.C. Smith of Smith Corona typewriters and Smith and Wesson firearms. The tower rises 462 feet across 38 stories, with a steel frame, a white terra cotta and granite skin, and a copper pyramidal roof. It was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River until the Kansas City Power and Light Building surpassed it in 1931, and remained the tallest on the West Coast for years afterward.
The exterior is one of the most intact early-20th-century terra cotta facades in the West, with a granite base, white-glazed terra cotta walls, and a copper roof now weathered to verdigris. The lobby is finished in Alaskan marble and Mexican onyx, and the original Otis brass cage elevators are still in service, hand-run by uniformed operators. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and underwent a major exterior restoration completed in 2016.
Smith Tower sits in Pioneer Square, one block from the Pioneer Square light-rail station and a short walk from the waterfront, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, and the Seattle Underground tours. The 35th floor Observation Deck and Chinese Room are open to the public with timed tickets at smithtower.com, around $23 for adults. The lower floors are working offices and residential lofts. The neighbourhood holds its First Thursday gallery walk, which has run continuously since 1981.