SOFAR’S PHOTOGRAPHS.
“My weird city. At least the weird bits.”

Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 517O • Occidental Park.
Interesting hodge-podge of buildings. I like the spots downtown in which the street grid changes orientation. (Our urban designers spent the eighteen-nineties high on laudanum.)
Richardsonian Romanesque, Ashlar, Bricks, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 5165 • Pioneer Square.
This is one of the occasional buildings downtown that has lost its original metal cornice. Either rusted away or lost in a fire. Metal cornices were easy to make and could get very ornate but many didn’t stand the test of time. It speaks for the good proportion and geometry of these old buildings that they still look good missing the most important part of the façade.
Smith Tower, Pioneer Square, Seattle. SMITH TOWER • Occidental Park.
That’s Smith Tower. 42 stories, 1914. This picture might look good on a postcard, but it’s not very interesting.
Ivy, Vines, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 3298 • Occidental Park.
I like to document occurrences of things growing on other things. That happens when it gets wet.
Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 3296 • Pioneer Square.
I took this photograph because I like the glass, but about the J. & M. Café, it’s one of those places in Seattle about which everyone is full of complaints and yet is always packed. From this I can draw one of two conclusions: A, we as Seattleites love to complain, or B, we as Seattleites like to punish ourselves. I’ve never been, but I can tell you that everything anyone has ever told me about a restaurant, bar, or club has been wrong.
The Maynard Bldg., Acanthus Leaves, Richardsonian Romanesque, Pioneer Square, Seattle. THE MAYNARD Bldg. • Pioneer Square.
Romanesque acanthus leaves are very different than the Classical acanthus leaves with which people are familiar.

If you stare at them long enough, I guess.

This is the Maynard Building, B.T.W., Terry Denny Building beyond.
The Mutual Bldg., 1st & James, Acanthus Leaves, Richardsonian Romanesque, Pioneer Square, Seattle. THE MUTUAL Bldg. • Pioneer Square.
Look closely at the old buildings around you and you’ll find whack-ass things like this. This is right outside the entrance to The Mutual Building, very Richardsonian Romanesque.
Metal Cornice, 1st & James, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 316O • Pioneer Square.
This is the corner of 1st and James.
Metal Cornice, 1st & James, Ashlar, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 3159 • Pioneer Square.
It’s uncommon for Richardsonian Romanesque buildings to have ashlar* further up than the first or second floor, but some do. Seattle’s got a lot of rock-climbing types, too, I wonder if anyone’s ever attempted to scale one of these buildings. I usually only get a few feet off the ground before someone tells me to come down.

*The rough rocky stone out of which the first few floors of a lot of Richardsonian Romanesque buildings are constructed. Shows up on Italianate and occasionally Beaux-Arts structures as well.
The Seattle Steam Bldg., Pioneer Square, Seattle. THE SEATTLE STEAM Bldg. • Pioneer Square.
I’ll fill in the history bit later. You can probably look this one up on Wikipædia for the time being.
1st & Cherry, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 17O1 • Pioneer Square.
Yep. Buildings. Let’s see, The Hoge Building, The Lowman Building, The King County Courthouse, a bit of The Alaska Building, and I don’t know what the one in the middle is.
Mt. Rainier. Mt. RAINIER • Pioneer Square.
That’s our mountain. It’s better than your mountain.
Pioneer Building, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 1684 • Pioneer Square.
I’m not going to lie to you, I just climbed to the top of a parking structure to take these photographs. Who is to say I don’t have a car.

The Pioneer Building is the colorful one in the foreground. The foreboding Amazon Headquarters are on the top of the hill.
1st & James, Pioneer Building, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 1683 • Pioneer Square.
First and James, from the parking structure at First and Cherry.
1st & Cherry, Smith Tower, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. 1679 • Pioneer Square.
Okay, left to right, The Dexter Horton Towers, (1924,) The Hoge Building, (1911,) The Alaska Building, (1904,) nameless building at Second and Cherry, (1892) The King County Courthouse, (1916,) The Lowman Building, (1907) and Smith Tower, (1914.) I didn’t have to go look any of those up.
The Pioneer Bldg., Ashlar, Acanthus Leaves, Richardsonian Romanesque, Corbelled Pilaster, Bay Window, 1st & James, Pioneer Square, Seattle. THE PIONEER Bldg. • Pioneer Square.
This is The Pioneer Building, (1892.) The most ornate building in Pioneer Square, a strange feature of the facade are these two corbelled ashlar pilasters that flank the bay windows above the main entrance. Originally the two pilasters extended above the cornice alongside a short tower, which collapsed in 1949.
Ashlar, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. O712. • Pioneer Square.
Yep.
1st & James, Ashlar, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. O7O9. • Pioneer Square.
More of those Romanesque-style acanthus leaves. Note the metal cornice. Bonus: This building has stuff growing on it.
Beaux-Arts, Pioneer Square, Seattle. No. O7O3. • Pioneer Square.
Beaux-Arts next to Richardsonian Romanesque. Those ovals with things around them are called “cartouches.”
Slanty Tree.. SLANTY TREE. • Pioneer Square.
This is a slanty tree. We’re on landfill and vaults this part of town, and the landfill in question is mostly century-old sawdust. Which is why the streets undulate and the trees are all slanty. All the foundations of the buildings are on the original ground twenty or thirty feet below street level, however, so they’re pretty sound.

“Occidental”, by the way, means western. It’s the lesser-known counterpart to “oriental,” which means eastern. There used to be an Oriental Avenue a few blocks down, but that went away. To orient something means to pose it facing east, almost all Greek and Roman temples were oriented, but some were occidented.

Your creepy home.