Seattle Historical Sites

The building exterior, although based on repetitive elements, has a real presence on 6^th Avenue and Dearborn St. It has also retained an important amount of significant architectural detail. Based on early drawings, the Austin Company, Engineers and Builders designed 804 6^th Avenue South as an office and shop building. The drawings, which appear to be original construction drawings, date from early 1928. (On the other hand, King County Tax Assessor Record card, which seems to have been completed in 1940, gives a completion date of 1924, but this is most likely an error).

Since then, most of the recorded changes to the building have been relatively minor or on the interior of the building. By the 1930s, the main tenant and owner of the building was Nepage-McKenny Company, later known as the  Nepage Electric Company. According to “Seattle’s South District, A Pictorial Study,” published in 1931 by the Consolidated South District Commercial Club, the Nepage-McKenny Company was the “largest electrical contracting firm on the Pacific Coast with offices in Portland, San Francisco and Oakland.” First opened in 1911, the company manufactured  a variety of electrical equipment, including switchboards, panel boards and street lighting poles in a variety of materials – bronze, steel, cast iron, concrete – seen in many Northwestern cities, including Seattle. It was also responsible for “thousands of electrical installations,” including projects at Harborview Hospital, the Northern Life Tower, the Washington Athletic Club.

During the mid-1940s, the architecture firm of Chiarelli and Kirk made interior alterations to the building and added an exterior ramp for E. R. Squibb and Sons. Architect Paul Hayden Kirk stamped the drawings. By 1965, the building housed Janco United Incorporated and Stafford Sanitary Supply. Based on drawings from late 1969, architect George Bolotin altered the building’s loading dock, located at the back of the building. Wan Hua Foods added its sign to the front of the building in 1998.

This concrete structure, which is primarily faced in brick veneer with some cast stone trim, is located on the southeast corner of 6^th Avenue S and Dearborn St. It is two stories in height. The former factory building is 119 feet by 81 feet and has a flat roof and parapet. On the exterior, the Dearborn Avenue elevation is divided into sixteen similar window bays, separated by engaged pilasters. The pilaster shafts are clad in brick, the same brick as the walls, and are topped by simple cast stone caps. Each long window opening sits above a brick sill, which tops a lower spandrel and a second lower sill. Below this, a brick soldier course runs the face of the elevation. Below the brick soldier course, there are sixteen basement level windows, corresponding to the upper level bays, which sit above a concrete base.

The shorter 6^th Avenue South elevation has many similar details to the Dearborn St elevation. It also includes the central portals, which are topped by windows that are slightly shorter than the standard window bay opening. Four standard window bays, similar to those described on the Dearborn St façade, flank the two these central bays. Because of the change in grade and because there is little or no slope in the grade along 6^th Avenue South, the basement level windows, set below the main window bay openings, are larger and all at one height above grade. While all the other windows, including the basement windows facing Dearborn St, have glazing, these window openings are currently boarded up.

The two central portals are similar and have distinctive characteristics. Each includes a shallow arched area, as well as corbelling to each side. One portal shelters a doorway, while the other opening is a narrow opening, which is at the same height as the lower window openings. Based on a photo from the late 1930s or 1940, this second narrow opening was the same size, although it is now also boarded up.

Based on the same photo, the cladding and most of the major fenestration are surprisingly intact. The greatest change is related to the boarded up lower windows along 6^th Ave South and a relatively new door in one of the central portals.