Collins Building (Seattle, Washington)

Smith Tower is a skyscraper in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Completed in 1914, the 38-story, 484 ft (148 m) tower is the oldest skyscraper in the city and was among the tallest skyscrapers outside New York City at the time of its completion. It was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River until the completion of the Kansas City Power & Light Building in 1931. It remained the tallest building on the U.S. West Coast for nearly half a century, until the Space Needle overtook it in 1962.The tower is named after its builder, the firearm and typewriter magnate Lyman Cornelius Smith (unrelated to Horace Smith of Smith & Wesson), but its construction was largely overseen by his son Burns Lyman Smith after his father's 1910 death and would remain under the ownership of the Smith family into the 1940s. It was originally known as the L.C. Smith Building until the Smith Tower became its official name in 1929. It was designated as a Seattle landmark in 1984.

The Lyon Building is a historic building located at 607 Third Avenue in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. It was built in 1910 by the Yukon Investment Company and was named after the city in France of the same name, reflecting the French heritage of the company's owners. It was designed by the firm of Graham & Myers in the Chicago school style of architecture and was built by the Stone & Webster engineering firm, whose use of non-union labor would make the unfinished building the target of a bombing by notorious union activist John B. McNamara, who would commit the deadly Los Angeles Times bombing only 1 month after. The Lyon Building was luckily not destroyed due to its substantial construction, and after little delay, it was completed in 1911 and soon became one of Seattle's most popular office addresses for lawyers and judges due to its proximity to Seattle's public safety complex and the King County Courthouse. It was the founding location of many foreign consuls, social and political clubs as well as the City University of Seattle. The building's basement now serves as an entrance the Pioneer Square station of the Seattle Transit Tunnel. The Lyon Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 30, 1995 and was designated a Seattle landmark on August 16, 1996. In 1997 it was converted to residential use as a shelter and services center for the homeless and at-risk by the non-profit Downtown Emergency Service Center, who are the current owners of the building.

Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Downtown Seattle, Washington, US. It was once the heart of the city: Seattle's founders settled there in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point on the far side of Elliott Bay. The early structures in the neighborhood were mostly wooden, and nearly all burned in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. By the end of 1890, dozens of brick and stone buildings had been erected in their stead; to this day, the architectural character of the neighborhood derives from these late 19th century buildings, mostly examples of Richardsonian Romanesque.The neighborhood takes its name from a small triangular plaza near the corner of First Avenue and Yesler Way, originally known as Pioneer Place. The Pioneer Square–Skid Road Historic District, a historic district including that plaza and several surrounding blocks, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Like virtually all Seattle neighborhoods, the Pioneer Square neighborhood lacks definitive borders. It is bounded roughly by Alaskan Way S. on the west, beyond which are the docks of Elliott Bay; by S. King Street on the south, beyond which is SoDo; by 5th Avenue S. on the east, beyond which is the International District; and it extends between one and two blocks north of Yesler Way, beyond which is the rest of Downtown. Because Yesler Way marks the boundary between two different plats, the street grid north of Yesler does not line up with the neighborhood's other streets (nor with the compass), so the northern border of the district zigzags along numerous streets. In some places, the Pioneer Square–Skid Road Historic District extends beyond these borders. It includes Union Station east of 4th Avenue S., and several city blocks south of S. King Street.

Howard House was a contemporary art gallery located in the historic Pioneer Square District in Downtown Seattle. From its inception in 1997 to its closing on June 12, 2010, the gallery fostered the careers of several local, national and international artists. Billy Howard, the gallery's owner, cited slow business as the basis for the decision. Gallerist Billy Howard has been credited with introducing the Seattle art scene to the concept of the alternative space and has championed artist-run spaces. He first began Howard House by hosting performances and site-specific art works in his Capitol Hill home, inviting visitors to see works installed in his stairwell, dining room and bedroom. In an interview with art critic Jen Graves of The Stranger, the gallery's owner said that he will continue to work with artists on a projects basis.

Hotel Seattle, also known as Seattle Hotel and the Collins Block, was located in Pioneer Square in a triangular block bound by James Street to the north, Yesler Way to the south, and 2nd Avenue to the east, just steps away from the Pioneer Building. It succeeded two prior hotels, a wooden and then a masonry Occidental Hotel. It was built in 1890 from the ashes of the Great Seattle Fire and served as a hotel until early in the 20th Century. By the time neighboring Smith Tower was completed in 1914, the Seattle Hotel had become an office building. It was demolished in the early 1960s and the site is now home to the Sinking Ship, a multistorey car park.

The Sinking Ship is a multi-story parking garage in Pioneer Square, Seattle bound by James Street to the north, Yesler Way to the south, and 2nd Avenue to the east, and just steps away from the Pioneer Building on the site of the former Occidental Hotels and Seattle Hotel. After the Seattle Hotel was demolished in 1961, the Sinking Ship was built as part of a neighborhood redesign.It was designed by Gilbert H. Mandeville (engineer) and Gudmund B. Berge (architect) of the Seattle firm Mandeville and Berge, and built in 1965. They also designed the Logan Building and an addition to the First Presbyterian Church downtown, the Ballard branch of Seattle Public Library, and two buildings at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962 (the Alaska Building and the Transportation 21 Building). A writer for HistoryLink described the Sinking Ship as "that skid road parking garage whose nihilistic construction depresses the flatiron block where James Street and Yesler Way meet at Pioneer Square."The parking garage is said to be haunted. It is owned by the Kubota family.The Seattle Monorail Project proposed a monorail station at the site of the Sinking Ship, which it hoped to acquire through condemnation. The Kubota family disputed the condemnation lawsuit, stating their intention to build housing and retail at the site.The garage has been made fun of many times in the past few decades. People were angry that a historic hotel was torn down, only to build what Henry Kubota’s daughter, Doris, called “the ugliest building in all of Seattle.” In 2001, on the garage’s roof, police and city officials watched and did nothing to stop the deadly Mardi Gras riot. Frommer’s travel guide calls the Sinking Ship “the monstrosity that prompted the movement to preserve the rest of this neighborhood. However, in a turnabout of affairs, in 2019, the parking lot was named the "coolest" parking lot in the United States by the design publication Architizer and London-based Looking4.com. “With its unique form and position along the street’s slope causing it to closely resemble the bow of a boat, the Sinking Ship is an iconic site in Seattle,” the contest’s sponsors wrote in a statement.

The Grand Opera House in Seattle, Washington, US, designed by Seattle architect Edwin W. Houghton, a leading designer of Pacific Northwest theaters, was once the city's leading theater. Today, only its exterior survives as the shell of a parking garage. Considered by the city's Department of Neighborhoods to be an example of Richardsonian Romanesque, the building stands just outside the northern boundary of the Pioneer Square neighborhood.The building at 213–217 Cherry Street, Seattle, Washington was originally owned by John Cort, of Cort Circuit fame. Opened in 1900, after Cort convinced the city to extend the northern border of its official entertainment district north from Yesler Way to Cherry Street, it was the city's leading theater of the time. It survived a November 24, 1906 fire, but after it was gutted by another fire in 1917, it was converted to a parking garage in 1923.The reign of the Grand as Seattle's leading theater was relatively short. Cort himself was one of the reasons for this, when he made Seattle's Moore Theatre, also designed by Houghton, his flagship house after its December 28, 1907 opening. The 1911 opening of the showpiece Metropolitan Theatre in the Metropolitan Tract further eroded the Grand's position. By the time a January 20, 1917 fire gutted the building, it had become a movie theater.After the 1917 fire, the building sat empty for several years before becoming a multi-level parking garage in 1923.

Pioneer Square station is a light rail station that is part of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel in Seattle, Washington, United States. The station is located under 3rd Avenue at James Street, between University Street and International District/Chinatown stations. It is served by Line 1, part of Sound Transit's Link light rail system, and provides connections to local buses and Colman Dock, a major ferry terminal serving areas west of Seattle. The station consists of two side platforms situated under street level, with two mezzanines connecting to the surface at James Street and Yesler Way in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood. It opened on September 15, 1990, and was used exclusively by buses until 2009. The tunnel and stations closed for almost two years, from 2005 to 2007, for renovation and modifications to accommodate light rail trains. Link light rail service to Pioneer Square station began on July 18, 2009, and bus service ended on March 23, 2019. Trains serve the station twenty hours a day on most days at a frequency of six minutes during peak periods and 12–20 minutes at other times. In early 2020, Pioneer Square station served as a transfer point between trains with a temporary center platform as part of construction for the East Link Extension.

The Alaska Building, which now houses the Courtyard by Marriott Seattle Downtown/Pioneer Square, is a 15-floor building in Seattle, Washington completed in 1904 to designs by St. Louis architects Eames and Young. At the time of its completion, it was the tallest building in the state of Washington—and remained so until the 1910 completion of Spokane's Old National Bank Building. The building was purchased by American Life, Inc. on December 6, 2007 for $38.7 million and renovated to begin a new life as a Courtyard by Marriott in June 2010. The original exterior of the structure was maintained, as were the marble lobby, original crown molding, window framing and wood pillars.

The Interurban Building, formerly known as the Seattle National Bank Building (1890–1899), the Pacific Block (1899–1930) and the Smith Tower Annex (1930–1977), is a historic office building located at Yesler Way and Occidental Way S in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Built from 1890 to 1891 for the newly formed Seattle National Bank, it is one of the finest examples of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in the Pacific Northwest and has been cited by local architects as one of the most beautiful buildings in downtown Seattle. It was the breakthrough project of young architect John Parkinson, who would go on to design many notable buildings in the Los Angeles area in the late 19th and early 20th century.The Seattle National Bank would leave their building after only five years, followed by numerous legal battles between its owners, creditors and builders that ultimately led to the foreclosure of the building. It came under the ownership of New York industrialist Lyman Cornelius Smith who would rename it the Pacific Block in 1899. From 1904 to 1928, the Puget Sound Electric Railway's Seattle–Tacoma line terminated in front of the building and the old banking room was converted into a ticket office and waiting room. The building was threatened with demolition several times in the 1910s and 1920s but plans to replace the building with a skyscraper always fell though. The building underwent a major interior modernization beginning in 1929 under L.C. Smith's heirs, which included demolition of the entire Southeast wing of the building. The building was renamed again to the Smith Tower Annex, which it would remain until its most recent restoration in the late 1970s after which it was renamed the Interurban Building as a nod to its role in local transportation. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 as a contributing property to the Pioneer Square Historic District.

The Butler Hotel or Hotel Butler in Seattle, Washington, was one of Seattle's leading hotels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was located at the corner of Second Avenue and James Street, in what is now the Pioneer Square-Skid Road National Historic District. During the Prohibition era, its Rose Room was repeatedly cited for flouting the laws against the consumption of alcoholic beverages. It closed in 1933; the lower two floors survive as part of the Butler Garage. The building itself is also known as the Butler Block, the name over the main entrance.

The Double Header was a gay bar located at 407 2nd Avenue S in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood, in the U.S. state of Washington. The LGBT establishment opened in 1934 and closed in December 2015. It was thought to be the oldest gay bar in the United States.In the basement of the building, a gay dance club called The Casino operated from the 1930s to the 1950s; afterwards it was converted into a diner. It was popular with drag queens.