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"The soul of a city resides in its humanity, not its historic buildings. But those buildings serve to remind the changing cast of human characters what that soul is made of, and keep it from mutating beyond recognition."
--Lawrence Cheek
Architecture writer Lawrence Cheek writes in today's P-I about two historic properties--one landmarked and one not, respectively--that have been undergoing some creative adaptive reuses: Queen Anne High School and the old Rainier (Sick's) Brewery in SoDo. We were fortunate enough to take a tour of the latter earlier this month.
The old Rainier brewery was acquired by Canadian Fritz and Tacoman Emil Sick following the repeal of Prohibition. The Sicks also purchased the Rainier brand and installed the big red R atop the brewery. Marrying the two great tastes that taste great together, Emil bought a baseball team, renamed it the Rainiers, and built a stadium in Rainier Valley. The stadium is now site of a Lowe's and Amazon.com's super-secret samples center (where they photograph the products you see on their web site).
The good folks at Historic Seattle organized a tour of the old brewery earlier this month. The Big Red R, of course, has since been replaced by the big green T. Indeed, Tully's remains the largest tenant, occupying about a third of the space. The remainder, as Mr. Cheek's article suggests, has very slowly been converted to artist's live-work spaces, recording studios, and the like.
Site manager, resident, and artist Conan Gale was gracious enough to lead the tour, allow us to take photographs, and show us his apartment, which has the best views in SoDo. Mr. Gale outlined the arduous, labor-of-love process of converting the building, a process exacerbated by the building's former industrial use. Progress has been stymied by arsenic, unstable foundations, zoning regulations (spanning three jurisdictions), and just about every pollutant possible in such a site. Yet progress continues at a site that isn't even an official landmark. As a result, Gale has resolved to never consider the project finished because the ghosts of the old complex have a way of throwing up new and compelling challenges anytime anything nears completion.
HistoryLink writes that Emil Sick became a prominent civic leader. He was president of the Seattle Historical Society and led a drive that eventually established MOHAI, the Museum of History and Industry. Additionally, "children of Emil and Kathleen Sick endowed a fund in their parents' names to promote publication of historical research by the University of Washington." Appropriately, MOHAI are now caretakers of the original Big Red R.
The Benaroya Co. purchased the property in 1999, envisioning the creation of a high-end art loft community. Ranier Commons LLC acquired the property in the summer of 2004 and is currently working with local artists to turn it into the Artsbrewery--a one of a kind arts community that provides affordable live/work space to artists and office space to arts-related organizations in addition to other exciting amenities.
-- artsbrewery.com
The challenges of historic preservation often call for impossible solutions to insurmountable problems and for creative new uses for derelict buildings. Benaroya--yes, the very same--couldn't rise to the challenge. By all sane rationale and financial prudence, this polluted, damaged, and mismatched complex should have been razed. It seems altogether fitting, then, that not only is a former property of Emil Sick's being saved but also that it is being given new life by creative tenants.
More photographs, quotes, and additional comments follow the cut.
Note: block quotes taken from Lawrence Cheek's article
You can pick out the ghosts of keystone-arch windows and doors, long ago filled in. There's a cluttered and bumpy rhythm to the massing of the buildings that suggests restless, improvisatory industry -- an appropriate symbol for an urban artists' community.
Conan Gale, is the site manager and an 18-year veteran of converted-warehouse living; he hardly notices the freeway bedlam and he even invited neighborhood graffiti artists to come in and decorate two walls of his own loft. He says the building's very toughness fosters a creative community.
The paint job, which recalls (for some of us) psychedelic album covers of the 1960s, effectively landmarks the building even in a freeway-eye view. Up close, though, it's shabby and cartoonish, and you wish that a century's encrusted paint could be blasted off to expose the color and texture of the original brick.
The interior spaces are bare-knuckled and raw, about as industrial-chic as, well, an old beer factory. It's obvious that this is no champagne-budget production.
This room housed enormous tanks full of fermenting beer. It is now a combination capoeira studio and living space for Alair Macedo's capoeira academy.
Graffiti writers and artists are frequently invited to decorate both interior and exterior spaces in the complex:
Gale mentioned that, at times, rival crews gathered in the same space to work next to one another and even admire one another's work.
The brewery remains intact except for the top 15 or so feet of the chimney, which was damaged in the Nisqually quake and needed to be removed. It was then filled with concrete to strengthen it against future seismic attack. The bricks were removed individually and will be used as for landscaping and walkways. Much of the remainder of the complex, with floors built to handle millions of pounds of liquid weight, rode out the quake.
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