Fountain of Wisdom

The Seattle Central Library is the flagship library of the Seattle Public Library system. The 11-story (185 feet or 56.9 meters high) glass and steel building in downtown Seattle, Washington was opened to the public on May 23, 2004. Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus of OMA/LMN were the principal architects, and Magnusson Klemencic Associates was the structural engineer with Arup. Arup also provided mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering, as well as fire/life safety, security, IT and communications, and audio visual consulting. Hoffman Construction Company of Portland, Oregon, was the general contractor. The 362,987 square feet (33,722.6 m2) public library has the capacity to hold about one and a half million books and other materials. It offers underground public parking for 143 vehicles and over 400 computers accessible to the public. Over two million people visited the library during its first year. It is the third Seattle Central Library building to be located on the same site at 1000 Fourth Avenue, the block bounded by Fourth and Fifth Avenues and Madison and Spring Streets. The library has a unique, striking appearance, consisting of several discrete "floating platforms" seemingly wrapped in a large steel net around glass skin. Architectural tours of the building began in June 2004. In 2007, the building was voted #108 on the American Institute of Architects' list of Americans' 150 favorite structures in the U.S. It was one of two places in Seattle to be included on the list of 150 structures, the other being T-Mobile Park.

The Seattle Public Library (SPL) is the public library system serving the city of Seattle, Washington. Efforts to start a Seattle library had commenced as early as 1868, with the system eventually being established by the city in 1890. The system currently comprises 27 branches, most of which are named after the neighborhoods in which they are located. The Seattle Public Library also includes Mobile Services and the Central Library, which was designed by Rem Koolhaas and opened in 2004. The Seattle Public Library also founded the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL), which it administered until July 2008. All but one of Seattle's early purpose-built libraries were Carnegie libraries. Although the central Carnegie library has since been replaced twice, all the purpose-built branches from the early 20th century survive; however, some have undergone significant alterations. Ballard's former Carnegie library has since housed a number of restaurants and antique stores among other enterprises, while others such as the Fremont and Green Lake branches have been modernized and remain in use as libraries.

The Fourth and Madison Building (formerly the IDX Tower) is a 40-story skyscraper in downtown Seattle, Washington. The building is located at 925 Fourth Avenue, at the intersection with Madison Street. Upon its completion in 2002, the late-modernist highrise was Seattle's first building to exceed 500 ft (150 m) in over a decade. In 2007, Fourth and Madison was awarded the BOMA International Office Building of the Year Award in the 500,000–1,000,000 sq ft (46,000–93,000 m2) category.The rooftop garden on the seventh floor is a privately owned public open space (POPOS).Construction of the foundation required shoring around the Great Northern Tunnel and Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. The tower also cantilevers 12 feet (3.7 m) over the Downtown YMCA.

901 Fifth Avenue is a 163.38 m (536.0 ft) skyscraper in downtown Seattle, Washington. It was completed in 1973 and has 42 floors. It is the 11th tallest building in Seattle, and was designed by John Graham and Associates. The building was opened as the Bank of California Building. Flood lights illuminate all sides of the tower at night. It was renovated in 2007 and achieved LEED Certified Silver status, which is rare for preexisting buildings. Formerly the Union Bank of California Building, the name was changed to 901 Fifth Avenue following the sale by Beacon Capital Partners to Kennedy Wilson Inc. of Beverly Hills. From its opening in 1973 to July 2007 the building address was 900 Fourth Avenue. In 2016, the building was purchased by Schnitzer West, developer of the nearby Madison Centre, and Investcorp for $223.3 million. The lobby was renovated in 2017 at a cost of $4.6 million to prepare for another sale. The Vanbarton Group purchased the building for $305 million in 2019. Its largest tenants are Cray and PitchBook Data; at its base on the west side is a Bartell Drugs store.

Forterra (formerly Cascade Land Conservancy), based in Seattle, Washington, US, is the state of Washington’s largest land conservation, stewardship and community building organization dedicated solely to the region. Currently, Forterra operates in multiple counties. Principal offices are in Seattle, Roslyn, and Tacoma.

Safeco Plaza (formerly known as 1001 Fourth Avenue Plaza, the Seafirst Building, and the Seattle-First National Bank Building) is a 50-story skyscraper in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. Designed by the Naramore, Bain, Brady, and Johanson (NBBJ) firm, it was completed in 1969 by the Howard S. Wright Construction Company for Seattle First National Bank (later known as Seafirst Bank), which relocated from its previous headquarters at the nearby Dexter Horton Building.Standing at a height of 630 feet (190 m), Safeco Plaza was the tallest building (and structure) in Seattle upon completion. It dwarfed Smith Tower, which had been the tallest building since 1914, and edged out the Space Needle, the tallest structure since 1962, by 25 ft (7.6 m); the latter led locals to refer to the building as "The Box the Space Needle Came In". The building was surpassed by the Columbia Center in 1984; as of 2022, it is the seventh-tallest building in Seattle. The building served as the headquarters of Seafirst until the bank moved into the Columbia Center upon its opening in 1985; in 2006, it became the headquarters of Safeco Insurance, which relocated from its previous headquarters in the University District.

The Central Building is a historic building at 810 3rd Avenue in downtown Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington. C.R. Aldrich designed the structure following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Madison Centre (formerly known as M5 Commerce Centre and 505 Madison) is a 530-foot-tall (160 m) skyscraper in Downtown Seattle, Washington. It was completed in October 2017 and has 37 floors of office space totaling 746,000 square feet (69,300 m2) of gross leasable area. It is the thirteenth-tallest building in Seattle. It is located at the intersection of 5th Avenue and Madison Street in Downtown Seattle, adjacent to the Seattle Central Library and William Kenzo Nakamura United States Courthouse.

The YWCA Building is a historic building in Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington. The structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been designated a Seattle landmark.

Expeditors (Expeditors International of Washington) is an American worldwide logistics and freight forwarding company headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

DocuSign Tower, previously the Wells Fargo Center, is a skyscraper in Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington. Originally named First Interstate Center when completed in 1983, the 47-story, 574-foot (175 m) tower is now the ninth-tallest building in the city, and has 24 elevators and 941,000 square feet (87,400 m2) of rentable space. The design work was done by The McKinley Architects, and it was owned by Chicago-based EQ Office. In 2013, the building was purchased by Canada's Ivanhoé Cambridge from Beacon Capital Partners of Boston. The building was renamed after First Interstate Bancorp was taken over by Wells Fargo in 1996. DocuSign took over naming rights in 2020 after expanding their lease within the building, which began in 2015.The exterior façade is composed of a six-sided, steel-framed tower that features a combination of tinted continuous double-glazed glass and polished spring rose granite panels. As is common with buildings in downtown Seattle, DocuSign Tower rests on a slope. The eastern entrance facing Third Avenue is slightly more than two stories higher than the Western side facing Second Avenue. On the west side, the building has a public hill-climb on two flights of outdoor escalators that were encased in clear tubes until 2006 when they were updated with a simpler, yet more modern glass roof. The building has three levels of outdoor plazas. The site was previously occupied by the 12-story Olympic National Life building, which was demolished by implosion on the morning of Sunday, February 28, 1982. It was the first demolition by implosion in downtown Seattle. One of the city's first steel skyscrapers, it was built in 1906 and was also known as the American Savings Bank and the Empire Building.

Daniels Recital Hall, formerly the First United Methodist Church, now The Sanctuary, is a preserved church sanctuary that has been re-purposed into a recital hall. It was built in 1908 on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Marion Street in Seattle, Washington, United States. The recital hall opened in 2009 hosting concerts that use the already existing church acoustics.The hall is owned by Nitze-Stagen & Co. who saved it in a deal that was met with the First United Methodist Church. This deal brought an end to a nearly 25-year battle for the preservation of the site.