Times Building Clock - Seattle, WA
Posted by: 
bootron
N 47° 36.779 W 122° 20.253
10T E 549784 N 5273498
A quality, functioning clock hanging above the east entrance to the Times Building in downtown Seattle.
Waymark Code: WM15N4
Location: Washington, United States
Date Posted: 01/23/2007
Views: 36
If you're visiting downtown Seattle, it's hard to miss this very elegant building which was the former home of the
Seattle Times many decades ago. The
Times Building (also known as the 'Times Square Building' and the 'Seattle Times Building') was constructed in 1915 and completed in 1916 by the locally prominent firm of Bebb and Gould. This clock is mounted above the east entrance to the Times Building. The Washington Mutual Savings Bank's name is displayed above the clock and reflects a time when the financial institution was once located here.
The National Park Service website has a good writeup on this building and reads:
As its name suggests, the Times Building housed the business, editorial and printing functions of one of Seattle's prominent newspapers. The Times was best known throughout the Pacific Northwest as the paper of the Blethen family, who purchased it in 1896. Col. Alden J. Blethen added innovations such as society, theater and fraternal columns, which boosted circulation from 3,000 papers a day in 1896 to 70,000 a day in 1915. The expanding paper needed more room and in 1915 moved to a larger, far more elegant home. Its triangular site allowed light to flow into every section of the building and enabled the architects to cover every elevation with beige terra-cotta decoration. The locally prominent firm of Bebb and Gould constructed the building so that four more stories could be added in anticipation of later expansion and heavily insulated the ground floor so that the printing machines would not distract those working upstairs.
After the move, the Times instituted two popular new services that further established its place in the rapidly growing city. It offered an information line, where a battery of telephone operators fielded questions on any topic, from the size of the pyramids to trolley departure schedules. The paper also installed a large illuminated baseball diamond on the Fifth Avenue side of the building, where lights were flashed on and off to indicate every play after it was received over the Teletype. A good game could draw a crowd sufficient to block the street. By 1931, the circulation of the paper grew too large for the building. A new plant was built in the northeast corner of the city and the building passed to other hands. Though no longer used for its original purpose, the Times Building remains an office building notable for its elegant exterior.
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There is also a PDF document that describes the building in greater detail. The building was registered as a National Historic Place in 1983.
When walking around the perimeter of this flatiron building (since it is totally surrounded by streets), one can appreciate the elaborate and elegant details of an architectural practice long forgotten. There are many details in the construction of this building that give a sense of a building from another place and time.