114 Vine Street in Seattle

114 Vine Street, Seattle, Washington, Belltown 98121

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The world is full of a lot of bad architecture. Very often it is the result of a company trying to achieve too much with too little.

This is the opposite of that.

In this building, the architect designed a work of art for use as an industrial facility. Essentially, the building was designed to be a big warehouse and transfer facility. Trucks would back in to the Second Avenue side of the building, and unload their wares, which would be shifted into trucks backed into the bays of the Vine Street side, and vice versa.

Freight that arrived too soon would be warehoused in the levels above. Or at least it would, if those levels existed. This building was originally intended to be four stories tall. Only one story was constructed, but was done in such a fashion as to allow for vertical extension in the future.

Even though this building would be primarily used by trucks, considerable time and effort was spend on its external appearance. Instead of ugly blank walls of exposed brick, large display windows were incorporated into the design. What brick there is has been framed, accented, and otherwise balanced by concrete forms, including urns, as well as horizontal and vertical members.

This design, especially the display windows and transom above, helped this building be repurposed into retail, office, and restaurants later on in life. But it's still easy to imagine some of those early trucks backed in to the bays loading up with wooden boxes and barrels.

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