On a cold morning in the dawning days of the 21st century, a national historic landmark collapsed. It was 5:45 in the morning. The streets around Pioneer Square were quiet, dark, cold, as a man, Peter Benard, drove a US Xpress Enterprise truck. Inexperienced, he drove the 18-wheeler into a historic iron and glass pergola, destroying it. It coll apsed in a heap. The driver left unscathed and the truck didn’t have much damage at all. The pergola, the driver might have known after the reports starting leaking out about its destruction, after the TV news crews started to descend on Pioneer Square, was that it had been standing since the early days of the 20th century.

It was 1909 and Seattle was a’bustle. Workmen had just completed building the world’s largest artificial island, Harbor Island, at a stout 350 acres. In the International District, locals could see kabuki for the first time staged at the recently opened Nippon Kan Theater. The Anti-Tuberculos is League of King County is founded. The Sorrento Hotel opens, inviting guests of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Suffragists hold a convention. John Miler is Seattle’s mayor. The Seattle Turks of the Northwestern League are winning baseball game after baseball game fielding stars like Lee Magee, Pug Bennett and Ralph Capron and, in Pioneer Square, on September 23, 1909, the “Queen Mary of the Johns” is opened ““ the nation’s most elaborately appointed underground restroom. Above the bathroom stood the pergola, used as both a stop for the Yesler and James Street Cable Car Company and as a graceful feature to the bathrooms below. The pillars in the pergola were hollow, used as ventilation for the bathrooms below.

It could accommodate 10,000 patrons a day. The underground toilets were of the highest class. “The man of travels will find nowhere in the Eastern hemisphere a sub-surface public comfort station equal in character to that which has recently been completed in the downtown district of Seattle,” noted Park Board secretary Rolland Cotterill. “In the United States there are very few that will be found equal to it.”

Indeed ““ for sub-surface public comfort stations it was unrivaled. Designed by MI T graduate Julian T. Everett, who also the architect of Seattle’s Leavington Hotel and the Pilgrim Congregational Church, and build by general contractor Thomas Flynn at a cost of $24,505.85, the bathrooms were elegant and extravagent. Underground, there were bathrooms for both men and women, both free and paid. The all included toilets, wash basins, urinals (for the men), and sinks. Both men and women could lounge in the anteroom that had oak chairs and shoeshine stands. Men could purchase cigars. The stalls were marble. The fixtures were brass. The walls were white-tiled and the floors were terrazzo. The toilets were flushed thousands of times a day, more on Sundays when the saloons closed.

And above that, the pergola sat. “The canopy is a combination of cast-iron posts with ornamental bent iron brackets, cornice and ridge line,” noted Seattle’s weekly publication Pacific Builder and Engineer. 65,000 total pounds of iron works were used in the pergola. The supporting columns weighed 500 pounds. The ventilation columns weighed 2,000 pounds. “The entire roof of the canopy,” the paper continued, “is covered with wire glass, which was installed by the Westlake Sheet Metal Works.”

The toilets were used again and again and again until World War II when they were closed and capped over. The pergola was restored in the early 1970s with a large donation from the Casey family. James Casey was one of the founders of United Parcel Service. UPS was established in Pioneer Square two years before the “Queen Mary of Johns” was opened. In 1977 the pergola, and the Tlingit totem pole nearby, were designated national landmarks. Then, in January of 2001 it was shattered to the ground. The company that caused the destruction helped pay for its restoration. That work fell to the Seidelhuber Iron and Bronze Works who used almost all the parts that had crumbled to the ground, welding pieces back together that broke apart, recasting salvaged pieces, reworking and redoing the entire structure.

The rebuild cost $3.9 million. Heidi Seidelhuber said at the reopening of the pergola in August of 2002, “The accident will have been a gift in disguise to the city if we can make the pergola survive longer because of the work we have done.” It will stand, then, in the 21st century and into the 22nd.

Jonathan Shipley
11/28/2009

The line was long. It stretched along 7th and Olive that first day ““ April 19, 1929. 5,000 people were already awaiting entry into the grand Fox Theatre at 10 am that morning, two hours before the first matinee showing. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer newsmen were combing the lines looking for interview subjects in the crowd, using new-fangled sound film, asking them about their thoughts on the new building.

The spring of 1929 already had plenty of good news to share. Grand Teton National Park was established in late February. In March, Seattleites read about the San Francisco Bay Toll-Bridge in the Seattle Times, the longest bridge in the world, opening. Also opening was a new vista in regards to American politics. On March 4, just a month and a half before Fox’s grand opening, Herbert Hoover was inaugurated as the nation’s 31st president, succeeding Calvin Coolidge. Little did they know that bad news was just around the corner. In October, $30 billion would be wiped out of the New York Stock Exchange ““ The Great Crash.

Those events weren’t on the minds, however, of those seeking entrance into the Sherwood Ford-designed state-of-the-art entertainment palace ““ the last arts venue opened in Seattle before that fateful Black Tuesday in October. There was a buzz throughout the crowd as they awaiting entry in the William Fox-owned movie house.

Fox, an Austrio-Hungarian-born movie mogul was known the world over. He founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915, the Fox West Coast Theatres chain in the 1920s. In 1927 he acquired patent rights to a sound-on-film process developed by a Swiss-firm. He was rich and, with that, made sure that the theatres he owned were equally rich. Seattle’s was no different.

It was elegant beyond the words of many who stood in front of it that morning. An extravagant Spanish motif splashed across the exterior stonework. The interior was decorated in the 16th century Spanish tradition. The timbered front doors were flanked by suits of armor. The grand foyer was carpeted in red. Velvet drapes hung from pseudo-weathered walls. They were colored green and rose. On the stairway landings were enormous murals of Spanish warriors in fight scenes. The building, inside and out, was a Moorish castle and Seattleites were enthralled.

Yes, the Paramount Theatre had opened the previous year to pomp and pageantry, but the opening of the Fox (originally planned and designed under the name Mayflower before Fox purchased it) was for the masses, and mass they did. 5,000 grew to 10,000. By the end of the first day, 15,000 got to see it.

Tickets were 35 cents for matinees, 60 for evening shows. The first ticket purchased was done by Mrs. Sarah J. Stearns. She stood and marveled at the lobby, admiring the décor, quite possibly unaware of all the technological and modern amenities all about her. For women there was a glass-enclosed room for noisy tots. They could care for their brood in the quiet room while the sound of the movie was piped into it. There was a room for men, as well ““ a smoking room. The projection room up top had an electronic warning system that let the projectionist know when it was time to change film reels. There was an electronic seating chart, as well, helping ushers find empty seats, amongst the 2600 of them, for late entries. And the organ! One of the most expensive in the city (it cost a staggering $60,000), the Morton organ could ascend and descend from the orchestra pit. Not only that, it could revolve as well, facing the screen or the audience.

The first patrons at the Fox sat for the motion picture. It was The Broadway Melody (“The pulsating drama of Broadway’s bared heart speaks and sings with a voice that will stir your soul!”). Starring Bessie Love, Charles King and Anita Page, the Harry Beaumont-directed film later went on to win the 1930 Academy Award for Best Picture (the first sound film, and first musical, to do so). They all sat, Sarah Stearns and the rest, amidst the warrior murals, the grand entryway, the suits of armor, and watched the movie.

Harriet and Queenie Mahoney, a Vaudeville act, go to Broadway where their friend, Eddie, needs them for a number in a Zanfield Show.

They watch, not knowing the future fate of the building they sit in.

The economic collapse in October didn’t help the theatre. The series of owners in the 1930s didn’t help. The fact that it sat outside Seattle’s retail and entertainment core didn’t help. In 1929 it was the Fox Theatre. In 1933 it was renamed The Roxy. In 1934 it was known as Hamrick’s Music Hall. In 1936 it was purchased by the Clise family.

Eddie was in love with Harriet when she came to Broadway but later falls for Queenie instead. Queenie’s being courted by a New York high society-type.

The theatre continued to limp along. 1962 – The Music Hall. In 1967 it was called the 7th Avenue Theatre. In 1978 it was called Jack McGovern’s Music Hall. 1987 ““ the Emerald Palace.

Queenie realizes that the society man doesn’t really love her.

In 1989 the Seattle Symphony rejected a proposal to relocate to the theatre permanently. The Clise family applied for a city permit to demolish the building.

Harriet realizees that Eddie loves Queenie.

Community activists rose up. Led by Allied Arts, in 1990 the hall was designated a city landmark.

The final credits roll on Metro-Goldywn-Mayer’s TALKING SINGING DANCING Dramatic Sensation. The crowd roars with thunderous applause. It’s not just because of the quality of the film (star Bessie Love would continue acting through Warren Beatty’s Reds), but also because they were sitting in the lap of cinematic luxury, the opulent Fox Theatre.

Two hours after the first throng of movie-goers entered the building, they left, into the spring Seattle day. They had a spring in their step knowing they participated in a small way in Seattle history; knowing that the beautiful building was worthy of civic pride; not knowing, impossible for them to know, that in January 1992 a wrecking ball turned it to rubble.

Jonathan Shipley
10/9/2009