Thanks for this piece. I always wondered what happened to the artist who created that beautiful ball & chain for Hammering Man. What a terrible waste for him to die by train/suicide.

Oh, and once they took down the Bartell Drug store, everyone could see what the developer of Westlake knew, it has a direct view of Lake Union. You can see it from ground level. And it was a public park tragedy, but a retail success story. I remember when the retail core was on the verge of packing up and leaving. The revitalization of this core bit of property saved it.

And the loss of the pedestrian core of Pine street was not as much of a loss as I first thought. It's slow moving traffic can pass through but you can pretty much jaywalk across it with impunity if the traffic is stopped a block away.

The before and after pictures of this area is a classic illustration of early 20th century city and late 20th century city. I think this phrase sums it up "at its design, as cheesy as feared. But"

Are their any refreshments at the Westlake affair?

Thank you for this absolutely fascinating account of how Westlake became so ugly. I bet that most readers didn't know that it was originally a larger chunk of public land that got sold out instead of being a truly inviting public space. I cut up my Nordstrom credit card (what a quaint concept...)over its demand that Pine Street be reopened, and haven't set foot in a Nordstrom store ever since. I imagine the Nordstroms and other retail tycoons are seething over Occupy Westlake because it's "bad for business."

I took the #33 downtown yesterday (Friday,10/14) with the specific intent to speak with people who I would meet at Westlake. Reading a ripped-in-half paperback (it's lighter to carry) of Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil" on the way down was a good preparation for my encounters. The city presents itself as an ueban concentration of diverse souls who represent the expanse of what so mysteriously comprises the embodied human condition, all warts and haloes of it.

I asked several people about their view of what I see as the absurdity of the "99% that are us" slogan that they were carrying on signs. A woman ended up saying it was just that- a slogan, but was disturbed when asked about the meaning of it, and this fits the situation.

I know that I am undoubtedly "on-my-own" when I ask how the American middle class, when asked to define what it means, can't decide whether to include those making $250,000 a year or not. And then there's the fact that everyone there, including the people obviously sent in by the mayor to do the "you-could-eat-off-of-the-pavement" version of a cleanup with water hoses, which were wielded with obvious intent to discourage anyone from later camping overnight, but even at that early point directed at indicating "who is really in charge here" as we stood discussing the issues at 2:00 P.M. in this commons area, having our discussion interrupted to warn us that they were getting ready to spray down the very area where we were standing talking, even though it was already spotlessly clean. It was actually humorous, as many of these things are, as I commented to one of the workers that I had never seen Westlake center so tidy, and a worker replied "we try", and when I asked if it would continue even after the demonstrations are part of yesterday's news. He smiled. Lucky guy; he's got a job.

But the most beautiful thing about the whole experience was realizing that, despite the fact that even Religion and Art have been commodified along with everything else, answering a question I asked when I 1st graduated from college some 40 years ago, the conversations I had with the demonstrators, who actually include me come to think of it, have not been Commodified, and a kid I was talking to agreed, as I shook his hand and then made my way back home.

The size of Westlake "park" eloquently describes the relationship of citizen to consumer in Seattle. We really have no adequate and beautiful public space, just the claustrophobia of tawdry commerce.

Protests do not depend on open space. They have a purpose and they will demand what they need as they mature. Why so much erudition on a populist movement? They have only just begun.

What a craven history this recalls: Nordstrom, essentially blackmailing a Mayor and city by refusing to locate its new flagship store in the old Frederick's unless Pine Street stayed open between 4th and 5th, thus gutting the park. Now, instead of a grand common center, we have a shriveled and compromised bit of pavement utterly dominated by commerce. Inspiring is never a word you'd conjure up about the space, though that was the dream. It's the reason that even today, in one of my futile gestures, I never drive that part of Pine Street and almost never shop at Nordstrom. A shop should not dictate our public spaces, and shame on us for embracing that dictate.

Yes, Westlake "park" and its "park rangers." What a joke. This so-called "park" is a tiny area of pavement in front of a mall, not a park. Who are the "park rangers?" I doubt they're part of the national or state or local park services. More likely some poorly paid rent-a-cops with a dressed up title and no authority or purpose.

Seattle only flouts its ridiculousness by calling this area a park and attempting to cast it as the site where citizens can have their say, or not as in the current case. Condescending to allow those occupying the area to remain deosn't lend any gravitas to this sad and embarassing display. I applaud the impulse behind these "occupy" movements wherever they're taking place, but I don't believe they will bring one iota of change.

As these protests take place far from anyone with any responsibility for the current situation, they leave the intended targets safely protected behind real law enforcement and an establishment that will support them to the death. Better to occupy the lawmakers' offices at all levels and insist that the big bankers be criminally prosecuted and Glass-Steagle re-enacted in order to return some sanity to our economy.

As long as these banker types can get away with this stuff the temptation to continue will trump any twinges of morality any of them may ever feel.

Unfortunately Mr. Scigliano confuses portions of the history of Westlake. The proposal to close Pine Street originated in the early proposal to create a four-block pedestrianized superblock--the kind of pedestrian-only mall that failed in almost every city that tried it (for the reasons, see writings by William H. Whyte). Thereafter, the retailers in the area always opposed the closing of Pine Street.

The Art Museum at Westlake idea was a brainchild of the Royer administration. Royer beat Schell to become Mayor partly by running against the large Mondev development project at Westlake (a project Schell had supported as the city's Community Development Director. After he won, Royer came back with a proposal to build a new Seattle Art Museum on top of a shopping mall at Westlake.

Victor Steinbrueck had been opposed to the Mondev project and likely favored Royer over Schell because Royer appeared to be campaigning against a giant development project at Westlake. When Royer came up with his scheme for a mixed shopping mall and art museum, Steinbrueck's organization, Citizens for Alternatives at Westlake, fought against that as well. In that fight, which went all the way to the state Supreme Court, the owners of the private properties facing what was then the Bon Marche also joined in to oppose the city's attempt to take the properties by eminent domain to serve a private venture.

After the city lost, it decided to offer the properties it controlled north of Pine Street to developers with design controls to assure the developer project provided certain public amenities. Several development proposals were received; two were serious proposals. This city selected the proposal by the Rouse Corporation.

The original Rouse proposal would have created a kind of glassed in "wintergarden" north of Pine Street, with garage doors on the sides that would have rolled up to allow indoor-outdoor flow of space in good weather. Steinbrueck's group, Citizens for Alternatives at Westlake (by this time, also including Folke Nyberg) brought a lawsuit against this proposal, claiming that the indoor space could not legally be considered true public space. The lawsuit was never tried--the city brokered a deal between the Rouse Corporation and Steinbrueck's group that established an area of public outdoor space north of Pine, and also established that the centerline atrium of the shopping mall would align with the angle of the former alignment of Westlake Avenue.

Steinbrueck died after the deal was made, but before ground was broken for the Rouse project.

It's unfortunate that Mike James misstatement of history received an "Editor's Pick." In fact, the decision to open Pine Street was made by voters. Further, Nordstrom's did not say it would not occupy the old Frederick & Nelson building; rather Nordstrom's said its store would be smaller if Pine Street remained closed.

A study of the historical record indicates that the idea to close Pine Street originated with the pedestrianized superblock proposal of the late 1960s early 1970s that was soon determined to be infeasible. Thereafter, Pine Street was always to remain open. The idea of closing Pine Street re-emerged in the years when the transit tunnel was under construction and Pine Street was unusable.

From an urban design point-of-view the closing of Pine Street would have been a significant mistake. One of the points made by Jane Jacobs, and confirmed by later urban analysts and designers, is the need for connectivity in the street pattern (recall Jacobs's advocacy of "short blocks" in DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES). Because downtown Seattle has a pattern of one-way streets, closing a single street to through traffic effectively creates a four-block wide barrier to movement. If Pine Street had remained closed the effect would be to create a significant barrier to getting to the west side of downtown -- for example, to Pike Place Market.

Nordstrom's is a much bigger asset to downtown than Westlake Park, which is a really lousy rallying spot.

I use the street all the time, happy it works again.

I'm thinking this occupation at Westlake is punishing the wrong people.

Downtown retailers and the people who work in retail are mostly innocent in the root causes of this.

We need people to shop right now for all kinds of reasons. I know some people who have been scared away by this.

The whole show should move over to the bank buildings. The area around Chase would be a good spot for Occupy.

Why don't we just close Pike/Pine on the weekends so that people can walk, bike and run downtown? It would connect Capitol Hill and the Pike Place Market. That's what they do in Ginza--one of the busiest commercial districts in the heart of Tokyo. (They also do this in Paris.) Department stores put tables out in the middle of the streets during this time so that people will stick around (and shop) and the whole area is full of families--shopping, playing, and relaxing. I think Ginza is only closed to cars from 10-5 every Sat and Sun, but it's really nice. Most of these families get to Ginza on the metro, though, and don't have to worry about looking for parking. Seattle is so car-centric. The great cities of the world are getting cars out of their urban centers. City dwellers in every other part of the world use public transport, bikes (bike sharing programs), and their own two feet for most of their transportation needs. If we want a vibrant downtown we can't all drive our cars downtown. We either have to design cities around cars or people. It's very hard to have both.