AKA: Terry - Denny Building, Pioneer Square, Seattle, WA; Hotel Northern, Pioneer Square, Seattle, WA

Structure Type: built works - commercial buildings - office buildings; built works - dwellings -public accommodations - hotels

Designers: Saunders and Houghton, Architects (firm); Edwin Walker Houghton (architect); Charles Willard Saunders (architect)

Dates: constructed 1889-1891

5 stories

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109-115 1st Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98104-2501

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Building History

The Terry-Denny Building housed retail shops on its first floor, which, in c. 1895, included a barber shop, cigar and tobacco shop and a paint shop. Upper floors housed the Hotel Northern (or Northern Hotel).

Building Notes

Architectural historians Jeffrey Ochsner and Dennis Andersen observed that the Terry-Denny Building resembled models produced in England during the late 19th century. They wrote: "The facade might be read as a Victorian interpretation of a Renaissance palazzo and may reflect Houghton's knowledge of English commercial construction." (See Jeffrey Karl Ochsner and Dennis Alan Andersen, Distant Corner, [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003], p. 175.) The building had brick facing with an array of terra-cotta details. It had a U-shaped plan to admit natural light into the interior, particularly important for hotels. The front facade, divided into 5 bays with a slightly projecting central bay, consisted of first floor commercial spaces with large glazed areas, three floors above with triplets of trabeated, double-hung windows and a top floor illuminated with arched double-hung windows. A segmental brick arch hung above the triplets of windows on the fourth floor. The central bay had an arch covering the front entrance supported by rusticated stone supports; a swan's-neck broken pediment, exaggerated in scale, rested above the archway. At the roof line, was a cornice topped by an ironwork balustrade along the parapet. The central bay was topped with an arched window on the top floor, a panel that read "Terry Denny" and a gable at the parapet. The architects placed stamped, ornamental terra-cotta panels, in the spandrels of the second and third floors.

PCAD id: 4915