A nice online article highlights the rich history of this former armory building and also shares a few secrets and tells us:
SEATTLE'S BIG BLOG
P-I archive: The shooting range and pool at Seattle Center
Before being converted for the 1962 World’s Far, the Seattle Center House building was a National Guard Armory. This picture was taken in 1939, the year it opened. (Seattlepi.com file)
Today from the seattlepi.com archives, we share photos of a Seattle Center building that most Seattleites have never seen.
The Center House, which was converted for the Century 21 Exposition in 1962, was built in 1939 as a National Guard Armory. The center’s website states that it housed the 146th Field Artillery and half-ton tanks. Initially the armory also was home to the 66th Field Artillery Brigade.
Deep in the basement — off-limits to the public on most occasions — is the former shooting range, where walls are still splattered with bullet marks. A photo of that range, taken in 2008, is shown below.
The area is now used as storage.
The picture above and the other archive photo below were taken the year it opened. Opening ceremonies were held the weekend of April 16-17, 1939. That Saturday, 7,000 soldiers from the U.S. and Canada marched down Second Avenue and Gov. Clarence Martin said the new facility should be regarded as an educational institution rather than a military stronghold.
“I like to look upon these great armory buildings, which we have directed throughout the state of Washington, not as barracks for soldiers, not as future military strongholds, but as part of our educational institutions for the training of our young men in good citizenship, in community, state and national responsibility,” he said.
The armory was built for $1,250,000, according to a P-I article at the time. Download a PDF of first-day ceremony coverage here.
On April 17, 1939, a crowd of more than 3,000 gathered to celebrate the completion as well as the state’s Golden Jubilee. Major General John F. O’Ryan of New York, who had commanded the 27th Division overseas during World War I and later became an attorney, delivered the principal address.
There was a bit of a controversy at the second-day ceremony when Rev. Louis E. Scholl approached the microphone unannounced and delivered an anti-war prayer. The crowd wasn’t pleased.
Click here to read P-I coverage of the incident in this PDF. A larger photo of the second-day ceremony can be viewed here.
The basement also has an unusable swimming pool near what was the firing range. Center officials say it was intended for recruits, but was filled in with dirt when that idea was scrapped. See a picture of that area below.
Another piece of Seattle trivia: In 1941, Duke Ellington played on the Armory stage for the University of Washington’s junior prom.
Read more about the center in this 2008 feature story. To learn the story of how a fire station led to the Space Needle, click here.