News

Jun 29, 2023

King Street Station (Seattle)

Tacoma vs. Seattle The Northern Pacific Railroad, which built the thirdtranscontinental rail line to be completed and the first to reach Puget Sound, stunnedSeattleites in 1873 when it chose Tacoma as

Tacoma vs. Seattle

The Northern Pacific Railroad, which built the thirdtranscontinental rail line to be completed and the first to reach Puget Sound, stunnedSeattleites in 1873 when it chose Tacoma as its western terminus. Some of Seattle's most prominent business leaders responded the next year with the home-grown Seattle &Walla Railroad. Their first trains wouldn't run until 1877, the rails never gotclose to Walla Walla, and its cars carried almost nothing but coal, but the spunky21-mile line made money and provided early evidence of Seattle's commercialpotential.

When the Northern Pacific finally reached Tacoma in 1883, itstracks came up from Oregon and trains had to be barged across the ColumbiaRiver. By then it was becoming apparent to many that Tacoma had been the wrongchoice. But the NP had invested millions around Commencement Bay and was loathto change its mind. The railroad's federal charter required it to provideservice to Seattle, and from 1884 until mid-1887 it grudgingly operated abranch line north that was so poorly run that it was dubbed the "OrphanRoad" (Armbruster). But its lack of faith in Tacoma's future was perhapsbetrayed by the fact that the Northern Pacific made do there with a modestwood-frame passenger station, vastly less impressive than the ornate, GildedAge depots that graced other terminal cities across the nation.

In 1887 the NP's tracks finally struggled across the CascadeMountains at Stampede Pass, the trains using tight switchbacks to work their way up anddown the mountains. It was so steep in places that two locomotives were needed tomove just five loaded freight cars. On May 27, 1888, the railroad completed a1.8-mile tunnel through the mountains, but by the end of the decade the NP wasconcentrating much of its activity in Seattle, while keeping Tacoma as itsofficial western terminus. And although Tacoma won the first transcontinentallink, it would be Seattle that would have the first grand railroad depot inWestern Washington, courtesy of James J. Hill and his GreatNorthern Railway.

The Empire Builder

James J. Hill was born in Upper Canada (later part of theprovince of Ontario), immigrated to St.Paul, Minnesota Territory, in 1856, and went to work for a steamboat company.Blind in one eye, Hill was rejected for military service in the Civil War.During the conflict he developed some expertise in transportation and after thewar went to work for the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad. He later started hisown business selling the railroads coal, a more efficient fuel than the woodmost were using, branched out into freight management, and soon becamemoderately wealthy.

Hill, with partners, bought his first railroad in 1879 -- hisformer employer, the now bankrupt St. Paul & Pacific. They renamed it theSt. Paul, Minnesota & Manitoba Railway Company, renovated the equipment andrails, and pushed the line west into areas ripe for settlement. By the end ofthe 1880s, Hill's railroad reached into what is today North Dakota and Montana,and he set his sights on the Northwest, determined to get a fair share of theopportunities it promised.

Hill missed out on the massive federal and state subsidiesand land grants that had enabled the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, and theNorthern Pacific to build the first three transcontinental rail lines withmostly other people's money. But he was determined to join the party, and to doit better than it had been done before. Using private financing, Hill began hisquest west in 1889, sending engineer John Stevens (1853-1943) to map a routeover the Rockies and the Cascades. Stevens soon determined that Marias Pass innorthwestern Montana offered a way across the Rockies without a tunnel, and theeffort moved west.

In 1890 Hill renamed his company the Great Northern Railway,which better reflected his ambitions. Later that same year a survey crew founda feasible pass through the Cascades and named it for Stevens. A tunnel wasplanned for the future, but for the time being the Great Northern would rely onswitchbacks, although ones less tortuous than the NP's at Stampede Pass. Inearly January 1893 Great Northern tracks laid from both directions met atScenic, west of Stevens Pass. Initially they ran west to Skykomish,Snohomish, and Everett, and Hill had earlier purchased the Fairhaven &Southern, which gave him a route north to Bellingham Bay.

Hill had done what noone in America had done before -- built a transcontinental railroad linewithout government subsidies and land grants. The next question was where theGreat Northern's western terminus would be. Hill flirted openly with Everettand Bellingham, but it was soon clear that this was a tactic designed to winconcessions from Seattle, where he really wanted to be.

Unlike many of the rogues who built the railroads, Hillseemed to be a man of his word. Seattle had dreamt for two decades of a rail lineover nearby Snoqualmie Pass, but most of its citizens were ready to greet Hill withopen arms no matter what mountain pass he crossed or what direction he camefrom. He would not disappoint -- before he was done he would win control of thehated Northern Pacific, change the face of Seattle, excavate under its downtownstreets the tallest and widest tunnel yet dug in America, and give the city amagnificent depot and expansive freight yards befitting its status as the hubof trade and commerce in the Northwest.

Surviving Disaster

Three times in 20 years -- in 1873, 1882, and 1893 -- therailroads brought the nation's economy to the brink of collapse. The inabilityof many of the companies to meet their obligations triggered a cascade of bankfailures in 1893 that would snowball into the worst economic depression Americahad yet experienced. Its effects would be felt for years, and much of the blamewas laid at the feet of men the press had dubbed "the robber barons."The major rail lines had taken on huge amounts of debt to grossly overbuild,laying tracks that were "not needed, through miles and miles ofuninhabited wilderness merely to insure that another road would not claim theterritory first" (Carlson). Among the companies that did not survive thePanic of 1893 unscathed was the Northern Pacific, which went bankrupt thatfateful year, then struggled along for the rest of the decade.

Even Hill was not untouched by the disaster, but he hadtaken a different approach than others and was far better able to withstand theeconomic turmoil. He too rammed rails through "uninhabitedwilderness," but he offered immigrants passage west for $10 if they agreedto homestead along the Great Northern's route. To ensure they could make a goof it, he hired agricultural experts to teach them how to work the sometimes-marginal land. He negotiated with silo owners to keep grain-storage pricesdown, a boon to the farmers who would use his line to ship their products. Onthe engineering side, Hill mapped his rail routes to avoid steep grades and toproceed in straight lines wherever possible, giving his trains the ability tohaul heavier loads, and for shorter distances. He replaced iron rails withsteel, which reduced track failures, costly and dangerous derailments, and theneed for constant and expensive maintenance. Not having the sizable benefit ofa place at the government's subsidy trough, Hill had to innovate, and he did sowith ingenuity and notable success.

A Muddled, Troubled Waterfront

Seattle's original Elliott Bay shoreline did not lend itselfeasily to commercial development. Steep hills rose close to the water's edge,and south of Jackson Street a muddy morass of tideland intruded as far asBeacon Hill to the east and south to the mouth of the Duwamish River. The homegrownSeattle & Walla Walla Railroad had to reach the working waterfront from thesouth via a spindly trestle whose sharply curved path across the mud earned itthe name the "Ram's Horn."

In 1887, largely due to the influence of Judge Thomas Burke(1849-1925), the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance creating RailroadAvenue (now Alaskan Way), a 120-foot-wide railroad right-of-way along theshore, much of it submerged under Elliott Bay. Two years later the 1889 GreatFire cleared the waterfront of everything that would burn. The next year, Burkeconvinced the city council to grant Hill's Great Northern fully half of the120-foot Railroad Avenue right-of-way. This sounded better than it was. By 1891a forest of pilings propped up railroad trestles, piers, wood-paved streets(including most of Railroad Avenue), and warehouses. There was as yet littleevidence of an overall plan, and very little agreement on what such a planwould look like.

This was what the Great Northern faced when its firstpassenger train reached Seattle from the north in January of 1893. Makingmatters worse, an inadequate, wood-frame terminal between RailroadAvenue and Western Avenue and Marion and Columbia streets had to be shared withthe despised Northern Pacific. Hill had his hands full with other matters,including blasting and drilling a tunnel through the Cascades at Stevens Pass,but a plan for Seattle was coming together in his fertile mind, one that wouldchange the city forever.

A Need for New Ideas

Hill had long argued that the waterfront should not befurther walled off from the city's commercial center by tangles of tracks andrailroad structures. The Northern Pacific was beating the drum for a large newpassenger depot and freight yards on Railroad Avenue, to be shared again by theNP and the Great Northern. This infuriated Hill, who was quoted as saying that he would rather put his terminus in some other city than have "anything to dowith a company so wholly lost to decency and honor" (Malone, 144). This comment was made before Hill, backed by the wealth of J. P. Morgan (1837-1913), gained effective control (although not the majority of stock) of the Northern Pacific in 1896.

The Great Northern's first tunnel at Stevens Pass wascompleted in 1900. In 1901, Union Pacific president E. H. Harriman (1848-1909), wanting access to Puget Sound, tried to wrest control of the Northern Pacific from Hill by buying up all of the company's stock not owned by Hill and his allies. When the ensuing battle drove up the NP's stock price from less than $200 a share to $1,000 in a single day, the New York Stock Exchange almost melted down when short sellers found themselves unable to cover their bets. When it was over, Hill still controlled the two transcontinental linesthat then reached Seattle, the Great Northern from the north and the NorthernPacific from the south. But Harriman had tied up enough shares that he had to be given a seat on the Northern Pacific board. Hill and Morgan then reached a truce with Harriman, and the three, joined by John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) formed the Northern Securities Company as an umbrella trust for Hill's rail lines. In 1904 the U.S.Supreme Court, in a famous 5-4 decision, ruled that the trust violated the ShermanAntitrust Act of 1890. It was ordered dissolved, but Hill retained hiscontrol over both the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific.

Now Hill's plans faced another hurdle. R. H. Thomson (1856-1949), Seattle'singenious, principled, and hard-driving city engineer since 1892, was leery of Hill and hisoutsized influence. When in the late 1890s Hill first proposed building apassenger depot and freight terminals on the tidelands south of Yesler Way,Thomson argued that Seattle needed a unified development plan, one not dictatedby any single person, even if that person was James J. Hill. The Empire Builderwould have to compromise, and it was with R. H. Thomson that he would do it.

A Detailed Plan

In May 1902 Hill's representatives presented Seattle's citycouncil with detailed plans for a terminal complex west ofBeacon Hill on the tidelands, which would first have to be filled. He won the support of Thomsonby agreeing to bore a 5,245-foot railroad tunnel under downtown Seattle to asfar south as Jackson Street, removing much of the congestion and all of thepassenger traffic from the waterfront. It was a radical proposal for its time,but Hill's plans to move his trains underground and build the city's main railroadfacilities on land reclaimed from the sea had undeniable logic and considerableappeal.

In October 1902 The Seattle Times, under a bannerheadline reading "Large Area of Seattle Tide Lands To Be Reclaimed," used nearly a full page to describe the ambitious project. The paper explainedthat part of Beacon Hill would be sluiced down to fill the tideflats, usingwater drawn from Lake Washington, and James J. Hill was given his due:

"President Hill of the Great Northern wisely saw years ago that only in the southern part of the city would sufficient room be obtained for the erection of such passenger and freight depots as were required in the leading maritime and railroad city of the North Pacific coast ... and in a year at most, it is believed, there will be ample ground available for all the facilities required by both the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern" ("Large Areas of Seattle Tide Lands...).

Building the King Street Station

Although Hill now owned the majority of stock in the Northern Pacific, he still didn't run its day-to-day operations. The NP's president, Charles Mellen (1852-1927), was a Morgan man, didn'talways agree with Hill's plans, and regularly took to the local press to makehis views known. The NP had long advocated a joint station on Railroad Avenue andHill's plans for the tideflats didn't change Mellen's mind. But heeventually was won over (very likely after wringing some concessions from Hill),and after the two met in Seattle in August 1902 it was announced that work on thenew passenger and freight facilities on the tideflats would start in 10 days, and work on thetunnel in 20. Hill assured the public, "When we begin -- as you very wellknow -- we never 'let up' until everything is completed" ("HillBegins Depot ... ").

Hill's prediction proved more than a little optimistic, but workfilling the tidelands and digging the tunnel did eventually get under way, andonce started rarely let up. While that was going on, a St. Paul firm, Reed& Stem, which later co-designed New York's Grand Central Station, was namedproject architect. Finally, on July 3, 1903, Judge Burke, who still served asHill's local representative, announced that workers had begun clearing the sitefor the new passenger depot and that "From this time on work will bepractically steady on the union depot. As men and teams are needed they will besent to that place, I understand" ("Work On the New UnionDepot").

Judge Burke's understanding notwithstanding, that was notwhat happened. Ever vigilant, Hill was watching how Seattle's downtowncommercial district was developing, and he was not entirely satisfied with whathe saw. In January 1904 the Great Northern and the city agreed that parts ofKing Street, Vermont Street, Weller Street, and Railroad Avenue would bevacated so that "the new Union passenger station might be brought oneblock nearer the business section" ("Dedication Is NotSecured"). Fortunately, things had gone more slowly than Judge Burkehad earlier anticipated and the foundations for the new depot had not yet been laid.

With this issue resolved, the pace picked up. By the end ofJuly The Times reported that work was underway on the final portion ofthe depot's foundation. Plans were made to obtain exterior granite facing andmarble for the building's interior, almost all of which had to come fromsources outside the state due to local companies' inability to provide thematerials in the amounts and dimensions needed. In November it was announcedthat a Chicago firm, Johnson & Company, the builder of Spokane's passengerdepot, had won the contract for Seattle's as well, at an estimated cost of$500,000. Great Northern officials, with what was becoming a rather routine excess of optimism,predicted the work would be done by July 1, 1905. They were off by almost ayear.

Ready or Not

By the beginning of May 1906 James J. Hill had had enough ofdelay. He issued an order that, come what may, the new station must be openedfor passengers on May 10, barely more than a week away. On May 3 The SeattleTimes detailed some of what remained to be done:

"...the contractor regrading King Street will find it impossible to open this thoroughfare in time to receive the Hill traffic ... .

"The Jackson Street viaduct is not half completed ... . Between Third and Fourth Avenues is a wide gap yet to be filled with steel work and a permanent pavement. Until this pavement is completed the entrance to the depot from Jackson Street ... will be difficult to even make passable.

"The interior of the depot needs nearly thirty days time to finish ... . On the lower floor chaos still rules. Work on the train sheds has but fairly started" ("Hill Insists ... ").

Nonetheless, the station opened on the designated date. Ratherremarkably, there appears to have been no formal ceremony for Seattle's firstbig-league passenger depot, probably because Hill's dictate left no time toprepare one. On May 10 The Seattle Times could only muse, way back atpage 6, about what it meant for the city:

"The days, and weeks, and years that Seattle travelers have been compelled to stand under shelter sheds and wait for trains has been finally compensated by the excellent home that has been provided for the great future, as well as the effect that will be immediately apparent along the busy water front of the city when the many passenger trains will have entirely disappeared therefrom" ("The New Union Depot").

What To Call It?

It was common practice across the country for railroadcompanies to negotiate with other carriers for the shared use of tracks,freight facilities, and passenger depots. The shared stations came to be known,generically, as "union stations" or "union depots," and inmany cities one or the other was later capitalized and adopted as a formalname. In Seattle such sharing, called "common use," was mademandatory in almost every railroad franchise the city council granted, starting with the first in 1882.

The Railroad Avenue station that the Great Northern andNorthern Pacific shared until 1906 was called the "Union Depot" oncontemporary maps. Until well after its completion, the new Great Northern/NorthernPacific building was also referred to in local newspapers as "the uniondepot" or "the union station," sometimes with initial capitalsand sometimes without.

The naming proved more difficult than it should have been.Sticklers objected that "Union Depot" was inappropriate because Hillcontrolled both the railroads that would use it. On May 11, 1906, the day afterit opened to passengers, The Seattle Times announced that unidentified "railroadofficials" had chosen the name "Seattle depot" ("Name IsSeattle Depot"). This did not end the debate. Eight days later, TheTimes, ignoring those unnamed "railroad officials," made anew proposal:

"The necessity of some name other than that of "Union depot" for the new Hill structure ... causes The Times to suggest that the Hill depot be known as the Northern depot -- thus meaning the Great Northern and Northern Pacific" (Untitled, The Seattle Times, May 19, 1906).

This didn't stick either. After debating formulations using the words Union, Seattle,and Northern, it appears that it was the local press that finally adopted forthe station the name of the street at the foot of which it stood. "KingStreet station," with the last word not capitalized, first appeared in TheSeattle Times on August 19, 1906. It was not seen in the newspaper with allthree words having initial capitals until the following year. In 1911 Harriman's Union Pacific and the Milwaukee Road would open a grand common-usedepot near the King Street Station that they named Union Station, with no debate.

Elegance Revealed

The exterior design of the King Street Station was a mash-upof styles known in the vernacular as "Railroad Italianate." City historic-preservationdocuments describe it more particularly as "Beaux Arts -- Neoclassical, Commercial, Italian -- Italian Renaissance" and note that "the campanile, with its prominent clock, is the building's most distinguishing feature and is based on the campanile on the Piazza San Marco in Venice" (Summary for 301 S Jackson St).

The steel-framed building was L-shaped, the long sidemeasuring 230 feet and the short leg 135 feet. The square, 242-foot clock tower, which untilthe Smith Tower was completed in 1914 was the tallest structure in Seattle, satin the notch at the intersection of the building's two legs and featured a14-foot-wide clock dial on each of its four faces, the mechanisms built andinstalled by E. Howard & Company of Boston. The ground floor was reinforced concrete with granite facing on the exterior and theupper two floors were solid brick masonry faced with pressed brick. A thick terracotta entablature ringed the building where the walls met the roof, andadditional terra cotta detailing framed the windows. Other decorative elementswere of both terra cotta and cast stone. All was topped by a tile-coveredhipped roof, and at the building's rear long shed roofs gave shelter to thosegetting on and off the trains.

When passengers entered the interior of the station theywere surrounded by elegance, later described by the Seattle Department ofTransportation:

"When the station was opened to the public in May 1906, its grand waiting room had ornamental plaster ceilings. The plaster walls were interspersed with fluted Corinthian columns. The lower part of the walls and columns ha[d] white marble accented with glass mosaic tiles in white, green, red and gold. A massive bronze chandelier hung in the center of the main waiting room. Along with four smaller chandeliers and wall sconces, they provided illumination for the passengers inside the station. The terrazzo floor ha[d] inlaid square mosaic tiles. This created a compass shaped pattern at the station entrance and other rectangular patterns throughout the rest of the areas" (King Street Station Renovation).

Elegance Concealed

During the first half of the twentieth century, as airtravel became more common and the fortunes of passenger trains went intodecline, many of the classic old railroad depots around the country fell intodisrepair. The King Street Station was no exception. At some indeterminate timethe hands on its four large clocks stopped moving and for years were right onlytwice a day. The interior grew shabby, repairs went undone, maintenance wasminimal. The once-grand depot began to resemble an aging bus terminal, andduring the long decades of railroad consolidation and retrenchment nobodyseemed to care.

It was not the passage of time alone that robbed the KingStreet Station of its original beauty. During the mid-twentieth century aseries of ill-conceived renovationsremoved or concealed much of its once-elegant interior. The Seattle Departmentof Transportation provides a succinct description:

"A series of renovations in the 1940s, 50s and 60s ... removed the plaster and marble walls, glass mosaic tiles and covered the plaster ceiling with acoustical tiles. The historic light fixtures were replaced with fluorescent lights. The terrazzo floor was cracked and in disrepair" (King Street Station Renovation).

And worse. Windows were boarded up, wood-and-glass doors replacedwith metal ones, and the huge waiting room was chopped up by wooden partitions,creating a dark warren of compartments.

Had things stayed as they were in the transportation world,the deterioration may well have gone on unchecked. But increasingly intolerablecongestion on the region's highways was finally persuading a reluctant publicthat some form of mass transit was needed, and there was born a railsystem for commuters that eventually would link a number of cities and townsthat lay along the Interstate 5 corridor. The development of Sounder commutertrains and a moderate resurgence in long-distance passenger-train trafficdemonstrated the continued need for a depot in downtown Seattle and wouldeventually spur the efforts to bring the King Street Station back to asemblance of its former glory.

Elegance Restored

That the King Street Station even survived into the twenty-firstcentury is in large part due to its 1973 listing on the National Register ofHistoric Places and its later inclusion on the register as an element of thePioneer Square/Skid Road Historical District. After a century of railroad failures,consolidations, and mergers, in 2003 the station was owned by theBurlington Northern & Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF). But the BNSF had little usefor it; it was a freight-only line and leased the passenger facility to Amtrakand the Sounder commuter-rail service. The station's designation as a historicbuilding meant that it couldn't simply be sold to a developer, and the BNSF hadfew other options.

Talk of restoration of the King Street Station came as earlyas 1991, and in 1998 the state Department of Transportation started somerenovation work, helped by a $5 million contribution from Amtrak. Sound Transitwould later spend more than $8 million on new platforms and means of access. Bythe time the station reached its centennial in May 2006, BNSF and the City of Seattlewere deep in negotiations. Price was never an issue, but there were questionsof liability and dozens of other legal niceties that had to be ironed out. OnDecember 11, 2006, the city council approved a deal reached by the railroad andthe office of Mayor Greg Nickels (b. 1955) for a purchase price of $1.Ownership would not be formally transferred until early 2008, at which time the city, apparentlyunable to cut a check for $1, tendered one for $10 instead.

The price tag for restoration and seismic strengthening originallywas estimated at $29 million, but the final total nearly doubled that, at $56million, with almost half going to seismic retrofitting. Funding came from avariety of sources. Seattle voters had approved Proposition 1 in November 2006,which included $10 million for the depot. State government contributed $10.1million and $16.7 million came from the Federal Railroad Administration. TheFederal Transit Administration added $18.9 million and King County 4Culture andthe South Downtown (Sodo) Foundation contributed $210,000. A Portland, Oregon,firm, ZGF Architects, designed the renovation effort.

The Unveiling

On Wednesday, April 24, 2013, more than 500 people and abrass band celebrated the reopening of the King Street Station's passengerwaiting hall. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn (b. 1959) spoke and gave a nod toformer mayor Wes Uhlman (b. 1935) for his efforts to preserve Pioneer Square'shistoric buildings, rather than turning the neighborhood over to developers asmany had urged. Said McGinn, "It's not just about the past, but about afuture where we recognize the best of the past ways of doing things"("Local").

And the "past ways" were everywhere in evidence. Thetowering, ornate plaster ceiling, once marred by the bolts and cables that hadsuspended the 1950s acoustical-tile drop ceiling and its sallow fluorescents had been exposed, patched,and repainted. A new chandelier illuminated the now-open space, its light reflectedin the repaired and highly polished terrazzo floor. Partitions that had foryears divided the hall into smaller areas were gone, restoring the room's feeling of spaciousness. The baggage and ticket counters were moved from thefloor's center to the margin of the room's north side. The missing marble facing on theinterior walls was replaced, and windows once boarded up again let in daylight.On the exterior, a new terra cotta roof replaced unsightly asphalt shinglesinstalled decades earlier. Unseen by the public was all the steel that wasadded to strengthen the structure against earthquakes, enough to build a20-story high-rise, according to project manager Trevina Wang.

There was still a little work left to do. Although the fourclocks in the central tower had been repaired in 2008 and started up in a ceremonythe following year, their operation had to be suspended until some interiorpainting was finished. And the depot's grand central staircase that climbedfrom the lobby to a new entryway and a park on Jackson Street was blocked off,still in need of finishing touches.

It took James J. Hill about two years to build his KingStreet Station. Its restoration, since the first halting steps in 1998, hadtaken 15 years. But it was well worth the wait, and generations to come will be ableappreciate an extraordinary example of the classic beauty and elegance that found its way into public architecture during America's Gilded Age and the earlytwentieth century. Ryan Hester, chairman of the Pioneer Square PreservationBoard, summed up the effort and what it meant: "The outright obsession ofevery detail in this magnificent restoration will be appreciated by all whoenjoy this space for the next 100 years" ("Local").