Drawing the line on Everett landmarks
Everett has a remarkable string of historic buildings and landmarks, as well as a record of losing many of them. The battle with the Port of Everett over the Collins Building has become a dramatic last stand for preservationists.
When pondering the final days of the Collins Building, a post-and-beam landmark on Everett's waterfront that once housed the North Coast Casket Company, it's easy to slip into a kind of mortician parlance.
The Port of Everett will not demolish the Collins, a property listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the last remnant of Everett's mill town heritage (think death followed by cremation). Instead, by a 2-1 vote of the Port Commission on June 16, it will be meticulously deconstructed (think death followed by organ donation). As the Port's Mitigation Strategy reads, "[Deconstruction] will provide interested parties with the opportunity to acquire elements from the building."
City of Smokestacks, must you always tear at our hearts?
The campaign to save the Collins culminated in a recently expired 2005 memorandum of agreement between the Port, which has owned the building since 1991, the State Army Corps of Engineers, and two preservation groups, Historic Everett and the Washington State Historic Preservation Office. It's the repeat of a film script activists have tired of: The idealistic and underfunded vanquished by the hard-nosed and deep-pocketed.
Nevertheless, the Collins fight is more complex than Goliath versus the little guy. Like all cultural symbols, the Collins Building has grown into a force greater than itself. The debate, at least among activists, is about the soul of a place. The Collins battle also raises the curtain on problems that will be tough if not not impossible to unscramble, from the limited statutory mission of port districts, to the unbroken past of preservation campaigns, to an indigenous lack of civic imagination.
First, some context.
The Collins is part of a string of landmarks that ring Port Gardner Bay. They include Legion Memorial Park on the north hillside, built with WPA support; the Hebolb archeological site (the Snohomish Tribe's winter village); the schooner Equator which was Everett's first National Register property; and, to the south, the Everett City dock, site of the infamous 1916 Everett Massacre. It's a constellation of historic landmarks ably documented in a HistoryLink cybertour written by historian Margaret Riddle (suck-up advisory: I sit on the HistoryLink board). Collectively, these treasures speak to the value of making Puget Sound a National Maritime Heritage Area, an effort Knute Berger analyzed last month.
Today the Collins building sits squat and broad shouldered on Everett's Port Gardner Bay, the fire-engine twin of Bill Boeing's Red Barn. Unlike the Boeing Barn, however, the Collins was built on pilings above since-filled tidelands, making it essentially impossible to move.
It's an impressive, delightfully incongruous sight. Historic Everett documents its significance:
The lumber of which this building is made is not possible to find in this day and age. Both because of the wood, and the post and beam methods of its construction, the Collins Building could never be duplicated. It's an authentic building from Everett's booming industrial age, and a visual and sentimental reminder of the heritage upon which Everett is built.
There have been enough preservation victories for activists to sustain a smidgen of faith (more in the value of collective elbowing than the judgment of the political class). Wins include saving and rehabbing the old Monte Cristo Hotel, Everett High School, the Commerce Building, and Seattle architect Carl Gould's magnificent Everett Public Library. (The library was subsequently remodeled and expanded in the 1990s by the architects at Cardwell/Thomas and Dykema).
The old Everett Theatre where Al Jolson, Lon Chaney, and Lillian Russell all performed, was also saved and refurbished. However, it's minus the triangular prism marquee, a profile in period 1950s neon, adorned with a saturn-like globe. The sign was designed by Seattle architect B. Marcus Priteca, nationally known for his work on Pantages theatres from Hollywood to Seattle. Priteca's neon diadem was judged too kitschy for Milltown and ripped down.
There are times, nevertheless, when historic preservation in Everett seems to revolve around the production of "It Stood Here Once" plaques. One marks the site of the Old Central Opera House, later re-named the Orpheum and then the People's Theater. It was there that Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs and labor and political radical Mother Jones galvanized audiences. Today residents can loiter in the Bank of America drive-thru, shut their eyes, and conjure the voices of both radicals and performers past. Or, well, something.
In 1976, the historic Colby and Silverstone buildings, the latter housing the last offices of the Everett Land Company, were demolished to make way for a Bicentennial Park. Just like the infamous Bicentennial Freedom Train, however, Everett's Bicentennial landmark rapidly came and went.
The seminal historic-preservation moment was the battle to build the Everett Events Center a decade ago. It was the Hetch Hetchy climax for preservationists, the heartbreak that felt pre-ordained and gave birth to a grassroots organization, Historic Everett.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Jul 24, 11:50 a.m. inappropriate
Peter - Good piece. Did you see the article in the June Nor'Westing regarding bulldozing net sheds, kicking out paying tenants who provide services to boaters, all for the goal of building condo's? With a developer who has now filed for bankruptcy?
Everett always has waited for SOMEONE ELSE to save it's bacon. From Henry Hewitt to the US Navy.
Run, Peter. Or help recruit someone who can run, and win, and work out a new direction for the Port. The Port's of Anacortes and Bellingham have prospered by doing a number of small things right. Everett keeps hoping
for home runs, or a rich out of town Sugar Daddy. Hewitt. Colby. The U S NAvy, Wetmore. Hoyt. Rockefeller....
Ross Kane Warm Beach E.H.S, Class of 1967
Posted Fri, Jul 24, 2:44 p.m. inappropriate
So it is built from good lumber? functioned well for 100 years? looks ordinary and is ordinary? I am puzzled that preserving buildings that are merely old and once useful have become a Cause. No one wants to buy it, it apparently has little useful life left (I presume the pilings it sits on are wood).
Do english majors want to preserve books that once described harness making? are 1950s era taxicabs being restored? where is the payoff in this effort? I am a philistine, I need to know.
Posted Fri, Jul 24, 3:27 p.m. inappropriate
Actually, this English major does want to preserve books that describe harness making, and I would love to take a ride in a 1950s-era taxi sometime.
Posted Fri, Jul 24, 6:20 p.m. inappropriate
An excellent piece for we Seattleites to read and reflect on the complex and deep history of the Puget Sound region. I agree with "kieth" in part that 'preserve-it-because-it's-old is not a powerful driver for public policy, but Jackson has gone further than that with "The Collins battle also raises the curtain on issues that will be tough if not impossible to unscramble, from the limited statutory authority of port districts, to the unbroken past of preservation campaigns, to an indigenous lack of civic imagination." That is, this is really about the meaning of the space we live in, not just a nostalgia for the good old days. Part of the problem is just the label of "preservationist," a term that captures a process but not a value; the critical issue, I would argue, is figuring out what exactly we are preserving--buildings or meanings.
Posted Fri, Jul 24, 8:21 p.m. inappropriate
Peter,
Excellent piece on the Collins. Today I hear that the building has a stay of execution and, we can hope, the Port will give a good second thought to keeping it.
One thing that remains puzzling is that heritage and the arts are still being considered to have no economic value. Valerie Steel of Historic Everett has done an excellent job of pointing out the possible grants available in this case and of course this is only a small part of the Collins' potential.
Margaret Riddle
Retired Historian Everett Public Library
Staff Historian with History Link
Everett WA
Posted Sat, Jul 25, 6:38 a.m. inappropriate
kieth,
I guess you just have to be inside this structure to feel it's strength and stability and most of all it's possibilities. Having been inside Boeing's Red Barn and in Collins there is no comparison to its (CB's) value. Collins is 60,000 square feet of pure tourism potential, not to mention the simple beauty of the wood and light from the banks of windows.
Ports have been given the power by the state to seek tourism dollars. We think Collins will be Everett's Pike Place Market.
Peter,
thank you for the timely writing.
Annie
Posted Sat, Jul 25, 11:24 a.m. inappropriate
Peter,
Thank you for putting into words what I have been believing and seeing since moving to Everett in 2004.
Visiting my grandparent's Victorian home as a child gave me an appreciation for old architecture, history and sense of place, wherever I have lived.
Seeing the restoration of the Davenport Hotel while living in Spokane gave me hope that the progressive destruction of historic places could be halted.
Everett's identity as a working class community needs to be respected and preserved, instead of erased.
Thank you,
bubbie
Posted Sun, Jul 26, 1:54 a.m. inappropriate
Everett is, or at least is built on, a beautiful place, with the bay on the west, the Snohomish valley to the east, and the full Baker to Rainier panoply making what I consider to be by far the best mountain view of any city on Puget Sound. A place where "the air nimbly recommends itself, and pleases the senses..." now that the pulp mills are mostly long gone. It has good feng shui. Mt. Pilchuck watches over it benevolently.
Though the residents have tried mightily, they have not yet been able to ruin this place. Here's hoping that those trying to preserve the Collins bldg. and other parts of the manmade heritage there succeed. Godspeed!
Posted Sun, Jul 26, 11:42 a.m. inappropriate
Peter - We lived in Everett for several years after my graduation from law school. The Collins Building is a landmark and should be preserved not only because it is a historic building but because it can be incorporated in the Port's plan and help generate jobs, like the Weyerhauser Office the Chamber of Commerce now uses.
The statement by Eric Johnson, the executive director of the Washington Public Ports Association, that "We're not historic preservation districts; we're job-creating entities" shows his failure to grasp this fundamental concept.
Kudos to Dave Mascarenas, our former neighbor, and other for their leadership.
The Port Commissioners know that the now modern and financially successful Port with which they are entrusted as public stewards as built on the backs of blue collar labor, and that the Collins Building is one of the few still standing that reflect this proud labor background. But for the those workers there wouldn't be any modern Port of Everett.
The Commissioners would do well to rethink their position and recognize that jobs and history are not only compatible but complimentary. If they cannot do so, it is time for some new Commissioners.