This odd li'l corner of Seattle has gone through a lot of changes over the past century or so; particularly in the past decade or two as newer, taller, fancier buildings have popped up.
Still, several historic buildings remain in Belltown. The following are among them.
---
The Austin A. Bell Building, 2427 1st Ave., was designed by Elmer Fischer in 1889.
It was commissioned by Eve Bell, the widow of the ill-fated Austin Bell (son of William Bell, the pioneer who'd originally settled Belltown). During the Gold Rush days, the Bell Building served as a hotel and dance hall.
By 1937 the Bell Building was part of local building collector Sam Israel's stock of low-rent, low-maintenance-budget properties. Israel left its three upper floors vacant, rather than spend to make them occupiable. The building gained landmark designation in 1977; five years later, a fire seriously damaged what was left of its interior. In 1997, condo developers bought the building from Samis's estate for $1 million. They kept the facade and built a modern structure behind it.
---
Seattle Fire Station 2, at Fourth and Battery, is the city's oldest operating firefighting facility. Built in 1921, it replaced an earlier structure at today's Space Needle site. When the current Station 2 first opened, its back wall faced the then still-standing remnants of Denny Hill, which would be leveled by the decade's end.
---
Regular Belltown Messenger readers know the story
of Film Row, the distribution offices and screening rooms centered at the old Film Exchange
Building on Second and Battery (now the site of the Belltown Court). Movies weren't made there, nor were they publicly exhibited; but every step in between those two took place there.
One key part of Film Row was the Paramount Pictures office at 2332 1st Ave. It was built at the dawn of talking pictures in the early 1930s. It handled the booking and shipping of the studio's product to theaters in four states plus the then-territory of Alaska.
By 1956, the movie business was contracting, while air-freight networks were growing. The studios found less of a need for all far-flung branch exchanges. The Paramount exchange building became the new home of the Catholic Seamen's Union, a waterfront ministry originally founded in 1939. Today, the Del Rey restaurant/lounge occupies its main floor.
---
The Edgewater Hotel (originally "Inn") on Pier 67 is Seattle's first, and still only, "on-the-water" hostelry. It was built in 1962, as part of a hotel-and-motel building boom accompanying the Century 21 world's fair. After the fair, the Edgewater might have become just another place to stay (albeit one where you could "Fish From Your Window")-but for an ingenious move by then-owner Don Wright to attract a new class of business travelers.
As the Beatles' 1964 U.S. tour was being organized, all of Seattle's other top hotels wanted nothing to do with the moptops or their manic teen fans. Wright took on the challenge, and its associated potential for publicity. Wright and his staff devised and executed a plan to get the idols on and off the premises and to keep the screaming hordes out.
Afterwards, Wright had the hallway carpets cut up and sold to Beatlemaniacs as souvenirs.
From then on, the Edgewater continued to welcome rockers-and their adventurous fans, as recounted in Frank Zappa's song "Mudshark." (The story on which the song is based can be read online at www.arf.ru/Notes/Fillmore/app.html.)
---
photo by Clark
The Five Point Cafe, one of Belltown's last working-stiff diners and dive bars, was strictly a food-and-coffee operation when it opened in 1929. (The building had been put up seven years before by the Webb Investment Company as a dairy warehouse.)
With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, beer and wine were added to the offerings. In 1949, as restaurants in Washington could start serving hard liquor, then-owner C. Preston Smith opened up an adjacent barroom.
Smith's son Dick started working at the Five Point in the '50s, took over its management in 1975, and continued to lord over it until his 2001 death.
---
(For more fun historic anecdotes, fully illustrated, check out our new book Seattle's Belltown, coming this fall from Arcadia Publishing.
This story is based partly on the research of Nick Bauroth, who wrote about Belltown's origins for the old Regrade Dispatch before he went off to pursue an academic career. At last word he was teaching at North Dakota State University at Fargo.)
-Clark Humphrey
Belltown Life #3 (2007) pdf
Belltown Life #4 was published on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 and inserted into theBelltown Messenger, Queen Anne News
and other fine Pacific Publishing Company papers.
---
Places Where The Past Lives On
