Free previewStop 7 of Seattle Walking Tour: Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square
The Son Who Wanted It Taller
You're at Second Avenue and Yesler Way in Pioneer Square, at the foot of Smith Tower. Tip your head back and follow that white terra cotta skin all the way up to the pyramid on top. That pointed roof is where this story ends. For nearly half a century, nothing on the West Coast stood higher.
The man whose name is on it was Lyman Cornelius Smith, a millionaire from Syracuse, New York, who made his fortune in firearms and typewriters. And no, he had nothing to do with Smith and Wesson. After the Klondike Gold Rush, Eastern money poured into Seattle, and L.C. Smith bought up so much of Pioneer Square that he became the city's biggest taxpayer. In 1899 he picked up this odd-shaped corner lot, then held by a one-story brick building, and for ten years he did nothing with it.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 7 of Seattle Walking Tour: Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square (3 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
