The Globe Building

Closing up nightly at Bowie and Company Antiquarian Booksellers (next door to Elliott Bay Book Company), I have become curious about the building's past occupants and the street scene they saw when leaving for the day. The past few months I have been researching the 140-year history and evolution of the block that surrounds Bowie & Co. Happy Anniversary, neighbor.

The lot at the southeast corner of First and Main sold soon after the plat of the Town of Seattle was laid out in May 1853, by Doc Maynard, the town's first physician and realtor. Much was to occur on this corner during the following four decades leading up to the 1890 construction of the Globe Building, the present home of the Elliott Bay Book Company: from providing the first logs to Yesler's sawmill (1853) to having the largest wooden building in Washington Territory, the Arlington Hotel (1876); from Chief Seattle posing for a photograph (1864) to white workers rioting to boot the Chinese out of town (1886); from the town's first hospital (1863) to the town's first library (ca. 1875); from an island full of trees (pre-1852 at high tide) to a peninsula full of ashes (June 6, 1889).

On that hot spring day in 1889, hundreds of wooden buildings went up in flames in Pioneer Square, the commercial center of town. The brick oven of Capecis & Alladio's Arlington Restaurant is all that rose from the rubble of the two corner buildings, the thirteen-year-old Arlington Hotel and the one-year- old Morse Building. By May 15, 1890, when the first bricks were laid for the Globe Building, the city had transformed. Construction had already started on over 120 "fire-proof" brick buildings in the "Burn District." This building frenzy drew an influx of construction workers and others into Seattle doubling the city's population to 40,000. In early 1891 the great four-story stone and brick Globe Building was completed.

The building has lead a remarkable existence, surviving three fires, two earthquakes, and an explosion or two.

In early May of 1901, moments after a fire started in the south basement of the Globe Building, a geyser of flame and smoke erupted up the elevator shaft to the fourth floor, causing great damage and destroying the wagons and farm implements Mitchell, Lewis & Staver Co. had for sale. To fight the blaze, the fire department used nearly every fire engine in Seattle, in addition to the fireboat Snoqualmie, which pumped a five-inch stream of water from the bay (at the time located at Jackson and Alaskan Way).

The Globe Hotel, situated in the upper floors near Main, was evacuated of its guests. It was reported to be "occupied by variety actresses and people of that class" and "numbers of sleeping women were found in the rooms" where "in one extreme case the officers had to dash a pitcher of cold water in the face of one who was strongly under the influence of sleep and some other lulling influence." The manager of the hotel took exception to such characterizations of his patrons.

"EXPLOSION Wrecks Business Block Downtown" headlined the February 7, 1924, issue of the Seattle Star. The news of the Globe Building's demise was somewhat exaggerated, but it must have given the neighborhood quite a start. At two in the afternoon, a second-story blast blew out the windows, showering glass fragments onto pedestrians on both sides of First Avenue, badly injuring one passerby. The blast's concussion shattered windows of several nearby businesses. Over 150 firemen were called to fight the blaze ignited by the explosion. The second floor was occupied by the Northwestern Drug Company, a front for an illegal liquor still which had the misfortune of exploding. It's unknown if the city's dry squad was ever able to locate the proprietors of the company.

The 1949 earthquake--the city's strongest--damaged the roof and broke loose a section of the parapet, which fell four stories and punched a hole in the street. As a precaution, the city soon required that the ornaments and parapets along the rooflines of Pioneer Square buildings be removed. This terra cotta, stone, and brick "rubble" was hauled away and used on a shoreline bulkhead landfill along the Great Northern railroad tracks just south of Edmonds. Waves are now lapping against pieces of the Globe Building.

The north half of the Globe Building was originally designed for fifty offices in its upper floors. The flood of immigration following the 1889 fire quickly convinced its proprietor to open a hotel instead. This Windsor Hotel was renamed Globe in 1898, which was in business until the late 1960s. At the main entrance to Elliott Bay was a saloon that operated from 1891 to 1970, except during Prohibition when it dispensed soft drinks. Other past tenants included retailers of bicycles, jewelry, chemicals, typewriters, carriages, and Studebaker automobiles, and wholesalers of groceries, cigars and gloves. During the late teens the Globe Building had a lady barber shop rumored to be a front for prostitution. For over 35 years, till the early 1970s Abraham Pupko ran a wholesale outlet for men's clothing and furnishings. The Seattle Quilt Company, makers of down jackets and sleeping bags, located there in 1926 expanding many years later two doors south to the building that now bears its name.

The Globe Building was one of the first structures restored when the Pioneer Square revival began in the late 1960s. It's appropriate that the Elliott Bay Book Company spent its formative years in the space that now displays juvenile books.

Written by Greg Lange on the Occasion of 
Elliott Bay Book Company's Twentieth Anniversary in 1993