I picked up my squeaky new, squeaky clean passport full of blank visa pages on Tuesday. Since I rarely park my car downtown, and still had some time on the meter afterwards, I took a little walkabout to check out the architecture around Pioneer Square.
Here is the King Street station just south of downtown Seattle. Construction was completed in 1906, and it is still a station for Amtrak and the ‘Sounder’ commuter trains.This Chinese gateway entrance to Seattle’s International District is relatively new .. only completed in 2008. It was privately funded, and two gate experts from Guangdong province in China actually came out to work on the project.Fire Station No 10 was also completed in 2008 .. it is 60,000 sq ft and very, very earthquake proof. (It would not do to have the city’s fire station crumble in an earthquake, now would it?).That’s Smith Tower in Pioneer Square on the right, completed in 1914. It stands 38 floors tall at 149 m (489 ft), and was only overtaken in 1962 by the Space Needle as the tallest structure on the West Coast. The building on the left is Frye Apartments. It used to be a grand hotel, but was converted to low-income apartments in the 1970s.
