Saint Mark's Cathedral: Spectacularly Incomplete

The history of architecture is enriched by buildings that are either incomplete, or, if completed, are monuments to plans gone awry. If it were straight, few would have heard of Pisa’s famous bell tower, despite its being the campanile to an adjacent duomo and baptistery both of which are outstanding examples of Italian architecture. The bell tower’s lean is a result of its being built on an inadequate foundation resting on soils incapable of supporting the tower’s tremendous weight. Part of the tower’s charm is that its builders attempted to correct its lean during construction, resulting in its top being kinked compared to its lower levels. So famous is its lean, it is a Unesco World Heritage site and tremendous intellectual and financial resources have been invested to preserve its construction flaw. [caption id="attachment_873" align="alignnone" width="555" caption="The Leaning Tower of Pisa (Image: Alkarex Malinäger)"][/caption]

The tower, or course, was a completed structure. Incomplete structures provide another chapter in the what “might have been” in the history of architecture and engineering. New York City’s George Washington Bridge, on the northern end of Manhattan and crossing the Hudson River (the only bridge to do such a crossing) is an example of a structure whose charms and grace result from its incompletion. Built during the Great Depression, the bridge was designed to be of similar appearance to its famous neighbor to the southeast -- the Brooklyn Bridge -- with the GW’s steel structure intended to be clad in stone. The financial crash of the 1930’s prevented this, and it stands to this day in unadorned magnificence. Le Corbusier, after his only visit to New York City, commented that the George Washington Bridge was: “ . . . the most beautiful bridge in the world. Made of cables and steel beams, it gleams in the sky like a reversed arch. It is blessed. It is the only seat of grace in the disordered city.” Although I disagree with the later, I certainly agree with his initial assessment, the bridge is beautiful in its unfinished state.

[caption id="attachment_874" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="George Washington Bridge, New York"][/caption]

Here on Capitol Hill, we have at  least two incomplete buildings whose final appearance was unanticipated from their designer’s original intentions. Although certainly not of the notoriety of the two above examples, both have, I would argue, greater beauty because of their incompleteness, and are among Seattle's finest structures. A future post shall examine St Joseph’s Catholic Church; today, we shall have a peak at the grand interior of St Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral.

[caption id="attachment_875" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="St Mark's Cathedral Interior"][/caption]

Saint Mark's Episcopal Cathedral is located on 1245 1oth Avenue East, and when viewed from either Queen Anne or Lake Union is one Capitol Hill's most visually prominent buildings. Its construction began in 1928, but due to the Great Depression funds were unavailable to complete it as originally designed, a design that included ornate, granite-clad  Gothic towers and a lush stone and wood interior (see: http://www.saintmarks.org/About/History.php for greater detail).  What one sees today from both the exterior and interior is a cast-in-place concrete structure, only partially finished in stone, brick, and wood. Although St Mark's exterior appearance is somewhat awkward, the interior evokes a magnificence and mystery that alludes to a time prior to its original Gothic precedents, perhaps to an ancient, Byzantine or Romanesque basilica, precursors to the Gothic.

The Cathedral is organized about a large cubic volume. Sub-dividing this space are four massive, concrete columns that not only hold up a great wooden roof, but were most likely intended to support the un-built Gothic tower. The columns must be the largest in Seattle, and have a faceting that gracefully sculpt the daylight entering the space. Facing each other from opposite ends are an impressive organ and a stunning rose window/altar structure. The organ's wood echoes that of the great ceiling, while the aesthetic of the steel and glass rose window complete the atmosphere of the unfinished worship space.

The organ forms the portal through which one enters the main worship space, and is accessible via a set of stairs from the Cathedral's lobby. It provides an excellent prospect from which to see the interior.

[caption id="attachment_878" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Wood Ceiling"][/caption]

The Cathedral ceiling is an expressive wood beam and joist construction, suggestive of Bernard Maybeck's Christian Science Church, in Berkley California (St Marks' architects were also from the Bay Area). Its rough-hewn appearance and gently water stained appearance harmoniously match that of the adjacent, exposed concrete (and water stained) walls.

[caption id="attachment_880" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Organist"][/caption]

During my Visit to St Mark's, I was entreated to hearing the Cathedral's organist at practice -- the voluminous  space with its hard surfaces provided the perfect resonating chamber for this impressive instrument.

[caption id="attachment_884" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Rose Window/Altar"][/caption]

I began photographing around 3:00 pm New Year's Eve, with the low, winter sun piercing the Cathedral's windows.When I was finished a few hours later, I had the good fortune to witness the transformance of the space from one illuminated with the winter sun's fleeting spectrum, to one provided by a stunning lighting design.

[caption id="attachment_885" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Rose Window and Water"][/caption]

Open to the public, I encourage all to visit this grand building.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters -- Authentic to the Last Drop

[caption id="attachment_825" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Baristas at Work"][/caption] There is a uniformity of intention and attention to detail at Stumptown Coffee Roaster’s 12th Avenue location that is authentic, be it in the manner in which its café and roasting spaces are presented, or in the manner in which their roasted beans are packaged. The 12th Avenue Cafe & Roasting House is both a place of leisure and of work, with both being housed in an environment that encourages an understanding of the company itself as well as the products they produce.

[caption id="attachment_826" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Downstairs' Coffee Bar"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_827" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Classic Burlap Coffee Bag"][/caption]

The 12th Avenue entry leads directly to the cafe space, but it was not the most interesting space, which is found beneath the Cafe, on the lower level, which customers are encouraged to explore. The lower level is where the soul of the operation is, it is where the roasters, training room, inventory, packaging and loading dock are located. The lower level is essentially a basement, and is architecturally un-adorned. That is not to say that is without visual splendor. Two pre-World War II coffee bean roasters are the heart of the space, and are constantly attended.  The patina of age -- worn wooden control handles, faded paint, and vintage graphics -- lends them a charm that only time can bestow.

[caption id="attachment_828" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Roasting Floor"][/caption]

Surrounding the roasters, are of course bags of coffee. Big, burlap bags of coffee, with the burlap (as I was later to imagine) at least partially informing the aesthetic to the entire operation.  Adjacent to the roasters (and fronted by a bar for customers to sit and take in the action), is a large conference and training room, where the various espresso machines that Stumptown uses to train their baristas in the Stumptown-way are housed. And these machines are beautifully exhibited, akin to museum pieces, being arrayed along a wonderfully textured concrete wall.

[caption id="attachment_829" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Many Lives of the Humble Bean"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_822" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Two Pre-War Roasters"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_833" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Barista's Tools as a Work of Art"][/caption]

Upstairs, in the café, the setting is more refined with furnishings that reflect a taste in mid-century modern. The layout and furnishings were designed by Stumptown’s founder Duane Sorenson in collaboration with Bo Concept, an international furniture retailer (http://www.boconcept.com/). The building is a restored space, whose heritage I was unable to learn, but is a welcome addition to the growing number or restored heritage buildings found on Capitol Hill. The restoration was made possible by the building’s owner, Scott Shapiro(http://www.eaglerockventures.com/). The building’s main over all architectural interest lies in its unadorned seismic bracing, with steel structure and fortified concrete walls, complementing the texture of the exposed hollow clay block walls, a material commonly found in Europe but long out of favor in the US. In addition to the rawness of the space were the bags of roasted beans in front to the main counter. Their plainness reflected that of the unadorned burlap bags of unroasted beans in the basement, the rawness of the architecture, which in turn reflected the authenticity of the Stumptown operation itself – no glossy packaging, no words heralding Stumptown’s environmental and labor practices; a straightforward package, adorned only by a simple card indicating the type of roast and the words “Direct Trade” (Stumptown deals directly with the growers it buys beans from, in order to assure the product they want, hence, Direct Trade).

[caption id="attachment_832" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Such Restraint -- Nice!"][/caption]

I am reminded of Reyner Banham’s 1986 classic A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture 1900 - 1925. In his masterful tale, Banham examines the grains silos, warehouses, and factories built in the United States in the early 20th Century and the qualities of those buildings that European Modernist architects, such as Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Mendelhson were infatuated with. These buildings, and their functional and structural expression as well as in their simple, unadorned materiality were held as models for the future of architecture, and photographs of Ford automobile plants and General Foods mills were widely published in Europe. Of course, many subsequent architects have had the same infatuation to the extent that an industrial aesthetic emerged, one seeking to leverage the same sort of authenticity sought after by the early Modernists. However, the application of the industrial aesthetic is just that, an aesthetic, an approach based on appearance, and devoid of its original context. In the Pacific Northwest, the so-called “Northwest School of Modernism”, a quasi-industrial and romanticized frontier aesthetic, is applied to all manner of buildings from educational to residential. What oftentimes is lacking in such a design approach is appropriateness, and therefore the authenticity sought by their designers; or, those same qualities sought by those architects written about by Mr. Banham.

I couldn’t help but think that my Stumptown experience taps into my architect-infatuation with the industrial; however, unlike most spaces so inspired, Stumptown’s atmosphere is not an aesthetic, but an over-all approach grounded in their pursuit of the truest tasting coffee they can roast.  Those words on their coffee bags -- Direct Trade – seemed emblematic of my Stumptown experience that day: grower to buyer, no middleman, and little room for interpretation, authentic to the last drop.

[caption id="attachment_830" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="White Seat Covers on Walnut Frame -- Classic Mid-Century"][/caption]

Rail-Volution Recap Part Two: The Importance of Coordinated Planning

The very fact that Rail-Volution exists shows there is a growing understanding among transit advocates and agencies that the large investments in transit systems should leverage private enterprise to advance a community’s economic, social, and environmental agendas. This awareness between agencies of the need to coordinate policies is key to the successful Transit Oriented Development (TOD) around the Capitol Hill (Seattle) light rail station, and is in evidence by the unprecedented collaboration between Capitol Hill residents, advocacy groups, non-profits, and governmental organizations. Although such linkages seem obvious to many of us, the coordination of transportation and land use planning has been absent for quite some time. There is abundant evidence, however, that such coordination has a history. On a national scale, the construction of railroads was an imperative of the Federal Government's during the nineteenth century. Railroads were the mechanism used to secure the unpopulated western states and territories within the foundling republic. The Federal government gave away millions of acres, in the form of rights-of-way, to rail pioneers with the expectation that the commercial development that followed and its subsequent population growth would create not only wealth, but also population centers, peopling and thereby securing the American west against foreign intrigues and interference. In the 20^th Century, the U.S. Interstate System was built and stands as the world’s largest construction enterprise. Expediting its execution were cold war polices centered on national defense, as well as the Federal Government's desire to stimulate post war development. One need only to look at the growth of the post war suburbs with its ubiquitous shopping malls –centered along interstate corridors -- to see the role transportation plays on land use, and the (unfortunate) consequences of a lack of coordination of transportation and land use planning.

Patton Park Apartments, Portland (image courtesy of REACH, Portland)

The urban sprawl resulting from the Interstate highway system had its social origins in the 19th Century and the industrialization of the country. During this time, a critical re-appraisal of the city occurred, due at least in part to the city’s often crowded and unsanitary living conditions. The physical (and social) reform of cities was championed by architects, planners, and sociologists and was centered around lessening congestion and pollution, as well as a romantic’s notion that a return to nature was the cure for the damaging effects of industrial progress. Beginning with the extensive commuter railroad suburbs of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, and culminating in the postwar boom in automobile use, the de-urbanization of the United States reflected changing social attitudes of how one ought to live. Instead of crowded and filthy cities, the notion held, one should move to so-called Garden Suburbs, a term associated with the English born thinker, Ebenezer Howard. The 20^th century diaspora to the suburbs would not have been possible without the government financing of roads, whose construction was in turn exploited by private enterprise in the form of land speculation, road construction contracts, and automobile manufacturing. Unaware of the impacts of its action, government largess resulted in a myriad of unplanned consequences, including the need to seek additional revenues in order to increase capacity for such necessities as utilities, emergency services, and public institutions including libraries and schools. And though these services had been previously provided, insufficient (or no-existent) land use policies did not account for the ever longer networks of service needed for an increasingly less dense population. Public investment resulted in private investment that created a demand for greater (and less efficient) public investment, and in a self-sustaining (and unsustainable) cycle.

Today, our culture places greater value on social equity, environmental stewardship, and fiscal responsibility than previously held. Instead of fleeing to the suburbs, Americans are rediscovering the benefits of urban living, and the many lifestyle enhancements and financial benefits it provides. Most of the transit advocates at Rail-Volution understand this fundamental relationship between land use and transportation planning, and its impact on social constructs. Unfortunately, too many transit and planning agencies are still only beginning to make the connection between their respective actions. Even metro Portland, and its deservedly acclaimed MAX light rail, at first did not grasp this union in all its nuances. Witness its first light rail alignment (along Interstate 84, and built in the 1980s) which is spatially isolated from the neighborhoods it serves, therefore only tangential to those communities. Fortunately a quick study, Tri Met’s (Portland’s metropolitan transit agency) subsequent alignments have been strategically placed in order to foster community development and greater efficiencies by going through neighborhoods instead of around (or merely adjacent to) them. Success has lead to greater experimentation, with subsequent lines (such as Interstate) being used to pioneer re-development of economically distressed areas, with promising results.

Patton Park Apartments, Portland (Sally Painter Photography, courtesy of REACH, Portland)

The second of my field sessions at Rail-Volution bore witness to advances in Portland’s thinking. A coordinated effort between Tri-Met and the Portland Development Commission (PDC, the city’s increment financed public development and planning authority) led to the strategic investment of urban renewal funds and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) dollars to replace a notorious hotel with low-income housing, as well as to enhance a dying city park. The development of Patton Park Apartments’ was made possible in part by FTA dollars: because Tri-Met came in under budget on the new transit line, the FTA allowed Tri-Met to apply surplus contingency funds to write down the hotel’s property value making possible its purchase by REACH, a Portland non-profit housing developer. This allotment of transportation funding for housing aligned with the FTA’s policy of supporting “Highest and Best Transit Use”, a policy of theirs adopted in the late 1990s,  reflecting the evolving policy of leveraging private development opportunities presented by transit development. Concurrent to the housing construction was the dedication of urban renewal funds by PDC to the adjacent Patton Park, with its rejuvenation resulting in a neighborhood asset, providing recreation space for the new families of the new apartments.

Patton Park, Portland

Another low-income housing project visited that day was Humboldt Gardens, which is ½ mile from rail transit and surrounded on three sides by bus transit. The Housing Authority of Portland developed the project. Designed in a traditional style, its appearance is not as forward thinking as Patton Park, but it is without question a vast improvement to what was there, a fact not lost by the families it serves. As was the case with Patton Park, proximity to rail and bus transit was important for the development of this project.

Humboldt Gardens, Portland

Humboldt Gardens Resident, Portland

In both Patton Park and Humboldt Gardens, the positive impacts of  coordinated transportation and land use planning  achieved many community goals, ones that if pursued separately would be impossible or much more difficult.

For more information:

For further information on Patton Park Apartments: http://www.reachcdc.org/community/development/info/C112/ http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2008/04/14/focus2.html?jst=s_cn_hl

For Further information on Patton Park: http://www.pdc.us:80/ura/interstate/crownmotel.asp

For further information on Humboldt Gardens: http://www.hapdx.org/humboldtgardens/pdfs/HG-projectsummarysheets.pdf

Next: Developing Trends in Transit Oriented Development and FTA Financing

Capitol Hill Building Analysis Examples 11 and 12

Well, here we are, at the end of this particular folly. With clouds a gatherin', and temperature droppin', venturing forth into the grays of our winter to document the building facades of our lovely neighborhood seems unlikely, at least until the spring thaw. This has been a great diversion, and was helpful for me to not only better understand our neighborhood, but understand why the buildings documented give me pleasure. I hope the few that have followed have profited as well. Until sunny skies return, I will delve into the inner world  . . . .

All Images and Text Copyright Schemata Wrokshop Inc 2010

The Architecture of Commerce on Capitol Hill

Commerce is the foundation upon which urbanism is built. And, as a city is the highest cultural achievement of humankind, commerce is certainly one of humankind’s greatest pursuits. Hannah Arendt defined in her classic book The Human Condition that our existence is defined by our labor, work, and action. Labor are the travails we go through to sustain ourselves in the most fundamental ways: bathing, eating, or the making of shelter. Work is the means we employ to sustain our labors, and can be seen as the physical activities we endure to achieve the security of the former. To the ancient Greeks, action was solely the undertaking of the citizen, the man of means (a landholder) who because if his wealth, had sufficient resources to not engage in work, thereby freeing the intellect to speculate. Action was the time citizens spent exchanging ideas on politics, the arts, and culture; or, more succinctly, time spent on discussing how man ought to live. Action was therefore the noblest undertaking of the citizen, and the place that action was undertaken in ancient Greece was the Agora, the place for citizens to debate. The market place was also in the Agora, however, this was an almost incidental use as it involved work. Centuries after its founding in Greece, the Agora became the model for the Forum of ancient Rome. The key building typology of the Roman Forum was the basilica -- the market hall, and the most important building typology in Western architecture its forms  including the cathedral (St Peter’s Basilica, for example), various houses of governance, as well as the great covered markets of Italy and England (Covent Garden, for example), the nations that during and after the Renaissance founded our modern market economy.

In the British colonies of the New World, urban centers and markets were slow to develop, for settlers were pre-occupied with both labor and work, leaving little time for action. First the town green was established, if only for pasturing livestock or to afford a suitable landscape to front the meetinghouse (the place for action). As life became settled and progressed beyond substance farming, markets and then towns developed, centered about the original town green, hence forth known as the market square. The market square would have buildings of commerce as well as governance defining its boundaries, both being built in an architectural style imported from the Old World. Later, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the first American (domestically generated) ‘school’ of architecture emerged, the Chicago School, whose first practitioners pioneered the use of the iron frame in high-rise construction. Buildings by Louis Sullivan, Burnham and Root, and H. H. Richardson in turn inspired the early modernist architects of Europe, who praised their functional and performance driven design (qualities that were inherent in designing buildings for a speculative office and markets). Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Adolph Meyer held as exemplary other commerce-based buildings found in the United States as well, such as the concrete-framed warehouse and grain silo. While some contemporaries derided an architecture whose main drivers were economy, expediency, and capitalism, these first truly American buildings had a profound impact on early modernist practitioners, who at that time were the architectural arbiters of taste for both the Old and New Worlds.

Although not entirely within the Arendtian sense, today commerce falls increasingly within the realm of action, and less so in that of work. Purchasing petroleum for one’s Vespa does not put one on the same plane, as say debating the future form of the Broadway TOD sites, but there is much commerce that engages in the transaction of more than commodities. If the commerce includes a direct transaction of ideas – whether directly through conversation between merchant, or, if the item transacted includes the stuff of ideas, of action, we have made the shift from work to action. And in the case of commerce, the new place where this expanded understanding of action takes is the market. In a (much) more inclusive society than that of the ancient Greek (although by no means one that is free form its own forms of societal exclusion), a society such as our founded on commerce,  an evolution of ancient ideas is taking place by merging work with action, overlaying larger societal pursuits that parallel and advance commerce to a higher level.

At the dawn of the 21^st century, consumers (townsfolk) have (rather belatedly) begun to incorporate cultural values as a metric (along with the traditional price, convenience, value metrics) with which to measure not only an item’s intrinsic value, but also its extrinsic value. Concerns for environmental stewardship and social justice are growing in the consciousness of the market place as witnessed by the so-called Triple Bottom Line, a term coined by John Elkington in his late 20^th Century book Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business. With the introduction (into a larger, cultural context, although many had already made this association) of values into commerce, discourse about those values -- while engaged in commerce -- necessarily follows. The formerly traditional marketplace is now not only one of goods and services, but increasingly of ideas, whether spoken of otherwise. And what of that market as place, has it changed to reflect these values, and if it has, what is in evidence of these changes? How have these values informed the design of the place? In addition to aesthetics (of interest to an architect, such as myself), what other values come to bear on the formation of these places for commerce? Collectively, how do these marketplaces define how we do and ought to live our lives on Capitol Hill? How do they reflect our values?

On Capitol Hill evidence abounds in this blending of work and action; or, commerce and values.  How does the present and how will the future urbanism of Capitol Hill be informed as one looks at these places of commerce? I have written of several places where value driven commerce is in evidence, although not necessarily within the framework identified above. As residents of Capitol Hill, many of us doubtlessly engage in a progressive, value based commerce, so this may not be new to you. Even if it is not new, what I hope might be (to both you and me), is speculating about value based commerce, and how the spaces where this activity occurs, spaces of both work and action, blend values and aesthetics, with future posts building upon those already made on Melrose Market, Volunteer Park Café, and Molly Moon’s.