| Historic Name: |
Graham Building/ Graham Apartments |
Common Name: |
Graham Apartments |
| Style: |
Other, Modern - Postmodern |
Neighborhood: |
Denny Triangle |
| Built By: |
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Year Built: |
1907 |
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| Significance |
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According to the Seattle Daily Bulletin, the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce’s predecessor, an apartment building, which fits the description of this building, was constructed or designed in 1907 by the firm of Edelsvard and Sankey for owner Duncan Graham. This building, which was called the “Graham Building” on the King County Tax Assessor’s Record card, sported a sign for the “Graham Apartments” on a photo from around 1936. It is still called by the same name on more recent property reports.
This is the oldest extant apartment building in the Denny Triangle area (The former Terry Stewart Apartments, now the Williamsburg Apartments, (1912), has a more complex design and is considerably more intact). This building had a simple design to begin with and has lost defining features, while new elements have been added, such as tile work on the balcony and parapet. Records the Seattle Department of Planning and Development suggest that the “cornice,” including possibly the brackets, was removed in 1950 and the porch was repaired in 1991. The architecture firm of GGLO remodeled the building for the Seattle Housing Resources Group around 1992, perhaps making the best of a ruined or demolished cornice; however, given the simplicity of the building and that the new work makes the building very compatible with the neighboring design by GGLO, the building’s architectural integrity is somewhat in question.
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| Appearance |
| This is a four story apartment building, with a basement level. The plan is basically rectangular, with a central porch, supported on wood columns at the center of the main façade, set along Terry Avenue. At the fourth and third floors of the façade, there is a central bay consisting of a pair of narrow, single double-hung windows. Corresponding openings let out onto the balcony, created on top of the second story porch: there is one double-hung window, in addition to and a door. What appears to be a new platform with steps leads up to the building’s main entry at the first level. At all four floors, two wide, well spaced, single, double-hung windows are set to each side of the central bay. Another original element is a small balcony, supported on brackets, set below the central windows at the fourth level.
A decorative element, added to the building when the apartment building to the north was created, is the tile cladding on this balcony. The building originally had a raised central parapet, with a curved top, set between two vertical capped elements, as well as two similar elements to mark the edge of the façade, as it does today; however, the parapet level has, in fact, been significantly altered. The parapet originally had an arrangement of fairly large ornamental brackets, which were probably of wood and supported angled overhangs. The brackets were attached at the top of the parapet, to each side of the central, curved raised parapet. Perhaps, not surprisingly given the work of the elements and wear and tear, they are no longer part of the building. Instead, the entire top part of the parapet appears to have been treated with a brown stucco-like-material or “dryvit,” creating a brown band across the top of the building. At the center of this band, is a new diamond shaped ornament in tile. The pattern consists of interlocking diamond shaped tiles, which are dark turquoise and dark red in color. This has the effect of giving the building a Post-Modern façade, which ties in with GGLO’s neighboring apartment building. |
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