The View from the 76th Floor

L to R: Brook, Eric, Louis Holmeyer

Territorial view from the Columbia Center

The Smith Tower beneath the Columbia Tower, photo by Eric Martin

The tallest building in Seattle is the Columbia Center building, topping out at 76 floors--and we were there! While I was working at the City of Seattle, I met the glass wall contractor for the construction of the building, which was going up right across the street from City Hall. One weekend morning when nobody else was around, the contractor, Louie Holmeyer, issued hard hats to Eric, Brook, and me, and had us ride the construction elevator to the top. The building wasn't enclosed, so only a wire around the perimeter warned workers not to fall over the edge. For the glass wall contractors, that was a risk. They couldn't work at all on a windy day because of the risk of having the wind treat a pane of glass like a sail, and carry away the pane, the worker, or both.
     The construction elevator was glass and ran up the outside of the building, so that was scarey enough, but once out on top, both Brook and I hugged the core of the building and felt like we needed to touch something solid.  Eric trotted over to the edge and shot pictures looking down. The pointy little skyscraper in his picture, above, is the Smith Tower, which for years was the tallest building in Seattle.  Vake recalled a man in an ape costume climbing up the side of the Smith Tower to promote savings bonds.
     Construction was controversial because the structural steel had been imported from Korea, and was alleged to lack adequate strength.  Additional steel was welded into the framework, but welder's sparks struck some of the glass wall and ruined the temper on the glass, which had to be replaced. And when the building was done, Louis warned, "Don't ever stand too close to that building in a wind storm." Eventually, some years later,some glass panels did come down in the wind.
     The law firm I went to work for was one of the first tenants in the new building We were on the 32d floor, but had memberships in a dinner club on the 76th, because clients always wanted to see the view from the top of the building.  The best view was from the women's restroom, because it had windows to the floor and no curtains or drapes (there's no need at 76 stories up), but no male clients got to see that.
     The new building had a few new building problems. It was still settling in when we moved in, so felt like it was trembling in many minor earthquakes. The building had to contain a huge reservoir at the top to charge the fire control sprinklers, since an ordinary fire hydrant at the street level couldn't begin to supply water to the top of the building. Twice, the reservoir broke and sent a torrent of water down the stairwell.
     When Eric and his buddy had finished high school and decided to drop in at my office, they decided to take the stairwell down again. They didn't realize that once they were in the stairwell, they couldn't re-enter the building, so developed very sore knees by walking down for at least 32 stories and leaving the building at the street level.
      Personally, I always thought that the lobby to the elevators was confusing. To my mind, the halls past the elevator doors were laid out like that optical illusion of a three-pronged tuning fork. An architect friend, Alan Adelman, disagreed. "It's obvious, you just go with the flow of the building," he said.
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