State moves toward demolishing historic artists' building
'We're not sleeping. We are panicking,' says one resident of Pioneer Square's 619 Western building, which is at risk because of the Alaskan Way Viaduct tunneling project.
Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons
Hugo Kugiya
Hugo Kugiya
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the date of a meeting between DOT officials and tenants of 619 Western. The meeting will take place Jan. 18.
In 1979, Edd Cox was a young artist recently out of art school at the University of Washington, looking for a workspace when he found himself on the top floor of a run-down, six-story warehouse on Western Avenue, on the edge of Pioneer Square.
Just feet past the windows of the building, several lanes of cars sped back and forth on the Alaskan Way Viaduct, blocking what would have been a view of Elliott Bay. But what Cox noticed was the height, space, and light in the empty building, which did not then have interior walls. A stairway and elevator shaft ran down the middle of the building, naturally dividing it into two halves. Most of the huge, multi-pane windows still worked, tilting open to let in the air and the sounds of the city and the roadway that, now, will likely bring about the building’s extinction.
“You could stand on the east side of the building above Western,” said Cox, now 63, “and look out all the way across the building to the west side and see the viaduct.”
Cox signed a lease in 1979, becoming one of the first members of an art colony that would become known simply by its address, 619 Western. At first, most of the floors were vacant, but within two years the building was full of working artists who paid about 25 cents per square foot in rent. Today, the building serves as studio and gallery space to almost 100 painters, photographers, and other visual artists, making it one of the largest artist collectives in the country.
If plans go through for the aging viaduct to be demolished and replaced with a billion-dollar tunnel, the roadway will soon be gone — and with it the institution known as 619 Western. The state’s Department of Transportation (DOT) recommended Monday (Jan. 10) that the building be torn down rather than reinforced before the planned construction of the tunnel begins.
“After careful consideration of numerous issues,” the DOT wrote in a letter to the artist-tenants, “including building condition, historic significance and retrofit costs, WSDOT is recommending the Western Building be demolished. While this was not an easy conclusion to reach, we believe it is the best for the safety of the tenants, visitors to the building, and construction workers. We are committed to assisting each tenant financially, as appropriate, and to helping you find a new location within Pioneer Square or another neighborhood if you so choose.”
Whether the building is demolished or fixed, all tenants will have to move out by March, 2012, for at least one year. While 619 Western is not the only building put at risk by the tunnel project, it is the only one recommended for demolition and the only one used as a workspace by nearly 100 artists.
DOT officials invited the tenants to a meeting Jan. 18 at Union Station to discuss their recommendation. Department officials need the approval of the nine-member, city-appointed Pioneer Square Preservation Board before ordering demolition. The preservation board meets Jan. 19 and has a viaduct briefing on its agenda.
Many tenants of the building have already made plans to move before the March 2012 deadline. Many do not know what they will do.
“Some people are already leaving,” said Johnny O’Brady, a longtime lease-holder. “We’re not sleeping. We are panicking. Whether they demolish the building or retrofit it we want the option of coming back at the same rent. Not everyone wants to move. It’s not necessarily the building we’re afraid of losing, it’s the culture. You can’t duplicate this place. There is nothing like this in Seattle.”
The concentration of artists at 619 Western allows them to use the building as a gallery for their own work and others. The building is one of the most popular destinations on the First Thursday art walk in Pioneer Square, when visitors can view art where it was created and meet the artists. As many as 2,000 people have visited the building on a single Thursday. The space is such a draw that owners of other galleries ask to bring in the work of outside artists. Last Thursday (Jan. 6), the lines of visitors barely moved through building’s wood stairwell.
The space has been cleverly divided into connected compartments, each with its own personality. Even filled in, the building still has a primitive look with exposed electrical conduit and a lathe ceiling. Floors are uneven and scuffed. The interior of 619 Western was featured prominently in the independent horror film, “Son of Terror,” about a Pioneer Square artist suffering from paranoid delusions; it screened at the 2009 Seattle's True Independent Film Festival (STIFF).
Some studios, like Cox’s, are large, about 1,000 square feet; some are small, less than 200 square feet. Some have windows; some are landlocked by partitions deep in the interior of the building. The current rent, about $1 per square foot, is still within the reach of starving artists, some of whom share studios, making rent even more affordable.
“You’re never going to be able to recreate what we have here,” said Jeff Jacobson, a painter of murals like the one at Second Avenue and Yesler Way, who has worked in the building for five years. “It symbolizes for me where my roots are. It’s like our Mayberry. We’ve turned it into our small town.”
The artists crafted their studios at their own effort and expense. Each room is different, and when put together side by side, floor by floor, form a density of creativity found in few places. Imagine an office building but with studios instead of cubicles. That density is the main reason artists are drawn to 619 Western.
“You have such freedom here,” said painter Lauren Olson, 23, who moved in about a year ago. “This is my first studio. I’ve found mentors here. I’m a hostess at a restaurant. I couldn’t justify renting a studio if the rent was not so cheap.”
While the state will provide relocation assistance for people displaced by the tunnel project, it is unclear how many will qualify, and for how much money. Even if most of the artists settle in another building, it will likely not be in Pioneer Square.
“There’s no real space in Pioneer Square that could absorb all of us,” Cox said. “We have to fragment to stay in the square.”
That is a choice they will likely face: Leave the square and stay together, or stay in the square and scatter. One way or another the cultural institution of 619 Western will probably not survive as it is.
“It’s frustrating for me because I just moved in a few months ago,” said Annie Malarkey, 23, a photographer who shares Olson’s studio space. Malarkey used to work for the photo editing site Picnik, which was acquired by Google earlier this year.
“I was excited to join this community,” she said. “To see them not even considering how we feel is frustrating.”
Early photographs of the building, which was built in 1910 out of concrete and heavy timbers, suggest 619 Western was used to store a variety of materials like soap, sails, baking powder, fishing nets, coffee, tools, cookware, tents, and canned food, near what was then a working, industrial waterfront. Railroad tracks ran alongside the building. The Alaskan Way Viaduct was constructed much later, in 1953.
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Comments:
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 6:32 a.m. Inappropriate
Thank god some recognizable identifiable specific parties have an ox to be gored in this viaduct tragedy/comedy.
I fully sympathize and hope that the artists will wake-up and realize that the viaduct can be repaired, and since these folks have imagination and the ability to communicate, they will be able to see and explain that the viaduct can be a positive improvement in the city's environment.
Wouldn't artists find strange bedfellows with Tim Eyman!
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 8:20 a.m. Inappropriate
The artist should hold their ground. It ain't over till it's over!
Why,
The Tunnel project funding has NOT been approved by the legislature which will hold their ground on requiring Seattle to pay cost-overruns. It is THE deal breaker! Call Speaker Chopp!
You have rights! All are protected by law!
If you move out, and the project dies, you may never get back in.
The City (Pioneer Square Review Board) has to review the proposal and deny or approve a demolition permit. It isn't officially on their calendar as of yet.
DPD will have to ultimately deny or approve the demolition permit. They work for the Mayor who is no fan of the Tunnel project.
Come together, hire an attorney. It's cheaper that way and they may donate all or part (pro bono) of their services.
There are many other items to list, but please don't scatter. Your strength is to stay together and fight.
If you are interested in chatting, call me at 206.669.5048
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 8:46 a.m. Inappropriate
I agree with Arties. Of course the state wants to demolition the building because its a heck of a lot cheaper than actually fixing it. But this is exactly the kind of collateral damage that Seattle is paying for (in this case culturally) because of the state's decision of a tunnel, and yet, they are reluctant to pay for these things because of the already tight budget.
I really hope our city leaders stand up and ensure that our most important cultural assets (both the historic PS and the many working artists in our community) do not get the raw end of this deal and, if the tunnel is going through, then the state at the very least pays for the many externalities it will impose on the people of Seattle throughout the process.
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 8:58 a.m. Inappropriate
These artists are some of the first victims of the Deep Bore Tunnel project and should get onboard with Initiative I-101, the "Stop the Tunnel" initiative. Its goal is to trigger a citywide vote on the tunnel project, most likely in May. The campaign has already gathered enough signatures to be validated by the city, but needs some extra ones as a cushion. To download a petition or otherwise get involved, go to .
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 8:59 a.m. Inappropriate
www.scatnow.com
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 10:25 a.m. Inappropriate
This is a tragedy, both for the building and the people in it. There should be a concerted effort to relocate everyone into similar buildings nearby, with a few years of price assistance if necessary.
That said, the benefits of the tunnel are huge. The benefits of going forward right away are huge costwise, with even a small delay meaning tens of millions (if brief) or hundreds of millions in extra cost as construction prices are already starting to rise again. Thankfully the people in charge know this.
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 10:53 a.m. Inappropriate
yup, tear down the most incredible urban roadway in the country, with enthrawling views. displace a vibrant creative community. and build what virtually everybody know is a ludicrous, traffic clogging tunnel. it takes a lot of people with a lot of masters degree's to come up with this crap. thank God this "sophisticated" city will be building a Chihuly museum, a monument to the real Seattle.
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 11 a.m. Inappropriate
Yeah, what beaky said, sans keeping the AWV. A cut/cover is the only sensible tunnel option. The surface/transit option gets the dangerous AWV down soonest and does not rule out an eventual (sooner rather than later) cut/cover roughly as shown in the SDEIS.
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 11:46 a.m. Inappropriate
As a New Yorker long ago permanently dispossessed by gentrification, I am painfully aware that one of the less-obvious agendas of what Robert Reich labels "supercapitalism" -- "tyrannocapitalism" in my own lexicon -- is the methodical destruction of bohemia.
Properly recognized as the sole source of new humanitarian or environmentalist aesthetics and ideologies in the otherwise savagely anti-intellectual United States, bohemia here has thus been under attack since the end of World War II.
The war on bohemia – seldom publicly declared but obvious to any of us who were part of the former Village and/or Lower East Side bohemias in Manhattan – is a logical extension of the sophisticated policies some say were developed for the Central Intelligence Agency by the Nazi war criminals absorbed by U.S. governmental agencies and Big Business after World War II. (For more on the associated cultural oppression, see Frances Stonor Saunders, "The Cultural Cold War: CIA and the World of Arts and Letters").
Just as CIA financed abstract expressionism to destroy American social realism and thus not only force the divorcement of politics and humanitarianism from aesthetics but also pervert the art world into a viciously elitist realm, so did Wall Street and Big Business methodically further the art war by manipulating prices to abolish the “permissive” conditions – especially inexpensive living space – that allowed bohemia to thrive.
The associated federal policy was obliquely announced by Nixon during an interview with William Randolph Hearst Jr. shortly after the soon-to-be-disgraced president returned to office in 1973. Nixon told Hearst the rebelliousness characteristic of previous U.S. decades came into being only because average Americans were allowed too much luxury. The interview in which Nixon made this statement was carried on Page One of every Hearst newspaper in the nation.
A series of corollary but under-reported announcements soon followed, their gist that government, Wall Street and Big Business – in other words the entire Ruling Class – would henceforth collaborate in suppressing “an excess of democracy” and thus restoring discipline to the nation.
In New York the process included the destruction of the tuition-free City University of New York and its replacement with a high-tuition school as socioeconomically exclusive as any other such U.S. institution. CUNY and its various branches – particularly City and Hunter colleges in Manhattan – had long been epicenters of bohemianism. But the newly imposed tuition requirements substituted socioeconomic status for intellectual acumen – the former considered the one sure index to capitalist reliability – and thus planted the toxic seeds of Moron Nation submissiveness in what had previously been the most rebelliously fertile academic soil in North America.
Similar processes, their most visible characteristic the radical upward manipulation of real estate prices, took place in nearly every other major U.S. city, with the result that in all save a few fringe areas, bohemia had been economically slain by the mid-1980s, destroyed beyond any possibility it could ever rise again to challenge Moron Nation's tyrannies.
Protected by its status as a cultural backwater, Seattle was one of the very few places to escape the anti-bohemian onslaught – all the more astonishing given Washington state's function as a proving ground for techniques of oppression, a role openly admitted by Watergate Felon John Ehrlichman during the related hearings.
Now though it's obviously open season on bohemians here too – with the impending destruction of 619 Western cunningly disguised as a pro-transit measure, thereby guaranteed to serve local Ruling Class interests by mobilizing Seattle's artists in a new anti-transit opposition. Like the viciously xenophobic anti-Forward-Thrust hatemongering of 1968 and 1970, it will no doubt be positioned as a vital effort to “preserve our Pacific Northwest lifestyle.”
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 12:29 p.m. Inappropriate
The "traffic clogged" statement is emblematic of the opposition. Some say the tunnel will be too heavily used while others say it won't be heavily used enough. That's why opposition can only succeed in getting in the way, and we'd never actually reach consensus a different solution. (There's also been some benefit in that the current plan has improved due to the civic debate.)
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 12:35 p.m. Inappropriate
the only scheme that isn't "traffic clogged" is already built: the viaduct. lets cut the BS and call this what it really is, a monstrously expensive and disruptive money pit whose sole purpose is to provide developers with prime realestate to build luxury condo's, more useless bistro's, and office space for the planners and consultants to come up with the next urban development "improvement"
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 1:27 p.m. Inappropriate
When 2000 plus folks frequent 619 Western it is time for the fire marshall to do a full inspection. I never felt safe in this place on First Thursday even tho it had stairways on both sides. Exposed wiring and overcrowding drove me away.
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 2:48 p.m. Inappropriate
I predict that even the most avid tunnel advocates are going to be surprised at what a mess this turns out to be. If they didn't enjoy hearing the noise from the viaduct now then they're in for a treat when the residual traffic with no where to go crawls through at eye level twice a day.
It's amazing that the WSDOT's own recent survey showed that 76% of those polled didn't even realize yet that the tunnel option had actually been chosen. What do think the response will be when they also discover it won't be a bypass for downtown anymore, just a massively expensive little drive into SLU for some of the wealthiest developers in the world.
Wow.
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 5:49 p.m. Inappropriate
I prefer the rehab option. But in terms of the tunnel project itself, this clearly reduces their cost/schedule risk, and is probably about being very conservative with all safety issues.
To suggest that this is evidence of further risk is not a valid leap.
Posted Tue, Jan 11, 5:51 p.m. Inappropriate
I mean rehab of the building. Hell no on the viaduct.
Posted Mon, Jan 17, 11:11 p.m. Inappropriate
The building is a decrepit deathtrap, at great risk of fire and/or seismic collapse. And it's as historically significant as a petrified turd. Just watch out for fires that look a little too convenient - Google "polson building arson"
Posted Tue, Jan 18, 5:54 p.m. Inappropriate
lorenbliss wrote "it's obviously open season on bohemians here too – the impending destruction of 619 Western cunningly disguised as a pro-transit measure, thereby guaranteed to serve local Ruling Class interests"
Did bohemians build 619 Western? Oh wait, that was capitalism.
Bohemia must be where economic logic goes to die.
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