Seattle Historical Sites

The building façade is not intact, since the windows have clearly been changed, but it presents many important elements of its original design. Despite its apparent simplicity, it still retains a presence along First Avenue. Schack & Young Architects and Engineers designed the building in 1930 for the Eyres Storage and Distribution Company, later known as the Eyres Transfer and Warehouse Company.According to the 1937 photo from the King County Tax Assessor’s Record Card, a simple sign with light lettering was also set about the main portal and indicated the building was “Eyres Storage No.2.” Subsequently, another building was also constructed in the same neighborhood for the Eyres Company, this one

built by contractor David Dow, at 2203 1^st Avenue South, based on drawings from 1926-1927.

The firm Schack & Young was a successor firm to the very successful Schack, Young and Myers partnership, which lasted from 1920 to 1929. Schack Young and Myers were especially well known for their work on the planning and design of buildings for the city of Longview, Washington, including the Hotel Monticello. James Schack, during the 1900s, had also worked with Daniel Huntington, as part of the partnership of Schack and Huntington, responsible for the First Methodist Episcopal Church, the Morrison Hotel, (the original Arctic Club), and the Delamar Apartments. After Myers’ departure in 1929, Arrigo M. Young and James H. Schack continued the practice until Schack’s death in 1933. James Schack was born in 1871 in the Schleswig region of what is now Germany and arrived in Seattle in 1901. He learned architecture through study at evening schools in Chicago and work at a number of architectural offices. Originally educated as a structural engineer, Young had also obtained an architectural license, by the time of Schack’s death. He practiced architecture and engineering independently, before forming a partnership with Stephen H. Richardson in 1941. That partnership firm evolved through the years and eventually become the Richardson Associates and then TRA, which only closed its doors in the 1990s.

At least by 1915, the Eyres Storage and Distribution Company was part of a larger nationwide consortium, the American Chain of Warehouses. Warehouses played a very important role in the shipping and transportation industry. An advertisement in a 1915 edition of Traffic World, published by the Traffic Service Corporation, listed Eyres Storage and Distribution Company as the local Seattle company, within a long list of warehouse companies across the nation.

By 1956, the building was listed in Polk’s Seattle directories as a warehouse of the Boeing Aircraft Company and by 1965 as the Seattle Transfer Company. By 1974, it again apparently housed the Eyres Transfer Company. By 1990, the building was vacant.

This four story building is rectangular in plan, approximately 148 feet along First Avenue South and 102 feet in depth. Its original structure includes 6” concrete exterior walls, as well as interior a grid of regularly placed concrete columns. The plan is divided into seven bays along the east elevation at First Avenue South and five bays along the north and south elevations, which originally were not meant to be seen from the street. The building has a flat roof and parapet. The cladding of the main façade along First Avenue is concrete with no other added veneers or applied ornament. Window openings are punched openings with concrete sills.

The façade along First Avenue South has a basically symmetrical composition, (with a slight variation, which will be described). Although it is a simple design, a number of modest decorative elements, as well as the symmetrical composition of the First Avenue facade give the building a presence along First Avenue. The facade is divided into the seven bays by engaged piers, which are expressed on the façade. Vertically, the piers extend slightly above the parapet level. Each one ends with a stepped decorative motif. The piers are also slightly stepped in plan or fluted at their edges from roughly the bottom of the fourth floor. Another similar Art Deco feature is the chamfered and stepped door opening at the central ground level. The outline created by the doorway is further echoed in the shallow frame of the door, made of concrete, which ties into a shallow horizontal concrete band at the base of the façade. The piers, which also present a very shallow reveal beyond the line of the façade (in plan), also visually tie into this base.

The rhythm of the fenestration also gives the façade more presence. The basic arrangement of the windows also follows a fairly consistent pattern, although what might have been a window at the ground level, (second bay counting from the south), is actually a door, topped by a smaller window. Basically, the rhythm of the openings also steps from the ground level to the fourth level. For instance, the end bays each consist of a horizontal row of two windows at the first and second levels, topped by a symmetrically placed window at the third and fourth levels. The two interior bays that flank the central entry have a similar arrangement, with the northern bay consisting of a horizontal row of three windows at the first and second level, topped by a symmetrically placed window at the two upper floors. Finally, the central entry bay consists of the main entry opening at the ground level, topped by a row of three windows at the second level, with only one window at the third and fourth levels.

The cladding and ornament of the façade have not been altered; however a historical photo from 1937, original drawings as well as more recent construction drawings reveal that the original windows were multi-pane, industrial sash. The original windows have been replaced mainly by double hung windows, although at the ground level, the replacements are taller windows divided vertically into three sections.