| Historic Name: |
Bailey Building/ Harrisburg Block |
Common Name: |
Broderick Building |
| Style: |
Commercial, Queen Anne - Richardsonian Romanesque |
Neighborhood: |
Pioneer Square |
| Built By: |
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Year Built: |
1892 |
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| Significance |
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In the opinion of the survey, this property is located in a potential historic districe (National and/or local). |
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Architects Saunders and Houghton designed the Harrisburg Building, also known at the time as the Bailey Building in 1889 for William Elder Bailey. In fact, Bailey is thought to have been responsible for attracting Charles Saunders from California to Seattle in 1889. The Bailey Building was designed first as a four story building, then as a five story building and finally augmented to six stories. Construction of the six story building was somewhat slow, but careful and it was completed in 1892, prompting the Seattle Times to observe: “Mr. Houghton is an English architect, and believes that a slowly built structure is the best constructed one. Therefore, he built the Bailey Building slowly, surely and well.”
William Bailey, originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was the son of a leading Pennsylvania iron and steel manufacturer. He became involved in the rebuilding of Seattle right after the Fire of 1889 and provided capital for many local ventures in real estate, railroads and newspapers. Bailey was sometimes involved in business ventures with other Seattle businessmen, such as Thomas Burke. Only several months after the Fire of 1889, he created the Washington Territory Investment Company, which offered help and advice concerning real estate transactions, investments and insurance in Seattle to investors from outside the Pacific Northwest. The first commission Saunders and Houghton received from Bailey in Seattle was for the Washington Territory Investment Company Building. In 1890, Bailey was also involved in a joint business venture with local businessmen Thomas Ewing and Thomas Burke to create the Hotel Rainier, designed by Saunders and Houghton and built as a large resort hotel in what is now downtown Seattle. Bailey also bought the newspaper the Seattle Press in 1889 and then the failing Seattle Times in 1890 and combined the two, hiring a very literate New Englander, Erastus Brainerd, as editor. Bailey, however, already had financial difficulties by at least 1892. With the financial panic of 1893 and downturn of the national and Seattle economy, Bailey left Seattle.
Of all of the projects Saunders and Houghton did for Bailey, the Bailey Building seems to be the only one that is still extant. It is also the most sophisticated and elegant and one of the few buildings in the former “burnt district” with facades fully clad in stone. Before the building’s completion, the Seattle Post Intelligencer of 1889 announced: “Firmness, massiveness, elegance and architectural simplicity are an especial feature of the imposing structure.” Later, the press described the finished Bailey Building as a “Symphony in Stone.” During the same period, Saunders and Houghton also designed the Terry Denny Building for Charles Terry and Arthur Denny, which, because of its Victorian composition and design, has more in common with the demolished Washington Investment Company Building. The difference between the Bailey and the two other buildings also shows the variety in the work of Saunders and Houghton. It is not entirely clear who was the real designer of the building, which might explain the unique nature of the building’s design within the firm’s known work. Like the Terry Denny Building and the Washington Territory Investment Company Building, the Bailey Building has definite roots in the history of Seattle’s development right after the Fire of 1889 and the arrival of adventurous businessmen and architects who saw opportunity in the rebuilding of Seattle. This is also an early and striking design by two Seattle architects who were to make important contributions to Seattle and later had established architectural practices.
Charles Willard Saunders, born in 1857, grew in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Little is known about his training as an architect, but he practiced architecture for a time, from 1886 to 1889, in Pasadena, California, along with his wife, Mary, before moving to Seattle in June 1889. By September of 1889, he had formed a partnership with Edwin Houghton, whom he may have also met in California. Edwin Houghton was born in Hampshire, England in 1856 and came from a family of quantity surveyors and architects. He was apprenticed in the London architectural office of Thomas Houghton, his brother and in Chelsea. Before arriving in Seattle in September 1889, he had first worked as a farmer outside of El Paso, Texas; then had opened an independent architectural practice in Pasadena, California. He moved with his family to Port Townsend, Washington in early 1889. Saunders and Houghton also designed the Olympic Block, once located on the corner of Yesler and First Avenue South, which collapsed famously and dramatically in 1972.
The Saunders and Houghton Partnership dissolved around 1891, when Saunders established an independent practice. It was around this time that Saunders designed Denny Hall, the first building on the present University of Washington campus. In 1898, Saunders formed a partnership with George Willis Lawton. In Pioneer Square, Houghton also designed the original “Cannery Building” on the corner of Main Street and Second Avenue Extension, which lost one its original facades as a result of the Second Avenue Extension.
In the early Twentieth Century, the building was known as the Railway Exchange Building. It housed various railway and steamship companies, professional offices, labor unions and developers and even a popular seer and spiritualist, Mrs. Pettibone. In the early 1900s, a former territorial governor, Eugene Semple, headed the offices of the Seattle and Lake Washington Waterway Company.
In the early 1930s, Henry Broderick, bought the building. For forty years, Broderick ran a thriving real estate management and development company from an office prominently located on the ground floor. During his ownership, Western Union also occupied one of the storefronts, as well as office space on the upper floors of the building.
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| Appearance |
| Rectangular in plan, the Broderick Building, originally known as the Bailey Building and also as the Harrisburg Building, is a six story building with brick walls, which are clad with large blocks of rusticated Tenino sandstone on its main facades. Its interior structure consisted (historically) of cast-iron columns with steel girders supporting wood beams and floors. Street elevations face north on Cherry Street and east on Second Avenue. The building has a flat roof with parapet and all openings are trabeated.
The main elevation facing east on Second Avenue is divided visually into six asymmetrical bays, although the overall composition implies symmetry. Above the ground level, (second to fifth floors), from south to north, there are three bays of paired double hung windows followed by the bay above the main entry, consisting of paired double-hung windows which are less wide than the first three pairs. The last two bays, which balance the composition of the entire elevation, consist of three windows each. Other distinctive elements of the façade include the Romanesque Revival portal which includes four short engaged columns at each side, supported on a more massive plinth of rusticated stone. This plinth is partially and delicately carved with floral motifs near the base of the columns. The columns also have delicately carved floral capitals. Curved bands, resembling the engaged shafts of the columns below, and with similar running floral motifs, also occur over the portal.
Smooth stone bands are inset around each series of windows, further accentuating the divisions between the bays. Belt courses with typical floral motifs appear above the second level and small spots of sculptured ornament, floral motifs or delicately carved grotesque heads appear occasionally throughout the composition of the exterior facades.
The north elevation is also asymmetrically composed with an entry bay that occurs toward the western part of the façade, (the second bay counting from First Avenue),and is also less wide than the other bays on this elevation. The elevation is divided here into five bays, with the first two bays being wider and consisting of a series of three windows, followed by double window bays. The actual design of the bays repeats most of the elements described on the west elevation. |
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| Status: |
Yes - Inventory |
| Classication: |
Building |
District Status: |
NR, LR |
| Cladding(s): |
Metal, Stone - Ashlar/cut |
Foundation(s): |
Concrete - Poured |
| Roof Type(s): |
Flat with Parapet |
Roof Material(s): |
Unknown |
| Building Type: |
Commercial/Trade - Warehouse |
Plan: |
Rectangular |
| Structural System: |
Mixed |
No. of Stories: |
six |
| Unit Theme(s): |
Architecture/Landscape Architecture, Commerce, Community Planning/Development |
| Integrity |
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Storefront: |
Slight |
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Changes to Windows: |
Intact |
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Changes to Original Cladding: |
Slight |
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Changes to Plan: |
Intact |
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| Major Bibliographic References |
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Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects. Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994.
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Andrews, Mildred et al. Pioneer Square: Seattle's Oldest Neighborhood. Manuscript. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, forthcoming 2005.
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Morgan, Murray. Skid Road, An Informal Portrait of Seattle, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1995 (first publication 1951).
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Seattle Post Intelligencer, 14 July 1889, p 8.
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Seattle Times, 26 March 1892, p 2.
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“Henry Broderick Building (formerly 2nd and Cherry Building), Historic Preservation Application, Part 1,” 20 April 1984. OAHP, State of Washington, Olympia, Washington, Microfiche File.
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Ochsner, Jeffrey, “Seeing Richardson in His Time: The Problem of Romanesque Revival.” in M. Meister, editor. H. H. Richardson, the Architect and His Peers and Their Era. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999.
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