What remained of the Booth Building on Saturday morning (Image: CHS)
Check out the full ghost sign now on view above E Pine here from quiet.seattle
The construction process to build the Broadway Center for Youth affordable housing and job training facility at Broadway and Pine includes a plan for the development that will recreate the facade of the corner’s historic Booth Building.
The demolition that started the process is revealing more of the corner’s history.
City street photography account quiet.seattle was first to post a picture showing the “ghost sign” painted on the west side of the Odd Fellows Building revealed by the construction.
“The recent demolition of two small buildings next to Oddfellows Hall on East Pine Street on Capitol Hill has revealed a ghost sign,” they write.
The revealed Margaret Olson School — Expression And Dramatic Art advertisement is a reminder of the days the Odd Fellows structure once was home to a dance school — and a funeral parlor. One hundred and a dozen or so years later, Century Ballroom is getting ready for its final dances in the building, too, before a hoped for transition to a new dance and events venue under new ownership.
The block was busy with the arts in the days of the Margaret Olson School. The Booth Building at the corner of Pine and Broadway making way for construction was also part of the scene. Nellie Cornish founded her school in the Booth Building in 1914 before moving to Kerry Hall on the other end of Broadway. That spirit now lives on, of course, with the Seattle Theater Group’s move into the hall.
A rendering of the planned rebuild
Back at the Booth Building, it became home to the Burnley School for Professional Art — which later became the Seattle Art Institute — in the 1940s. Eventually, it became part of Seattle Central’s campus. And now it is destined to be echoed in the Broadway Center for Youth.
The Booth Building was rejected by the city’s landmarks board for historical protections in a pandemic-era vote. The report on the structure from the process said the building was developed by brothers William G. and John R. Booth, both doctors, as an investment property.
The “three‐story, concrete and unreinforced brick masonry structure” featured a tower with “a shallow pyramidal hipped roof” and large “storefront openings at the first story.” “Originally designed with Mission Revival architectural features, changes over time have simplified and flattened the appearance of the façades,” the report submitted for the property noted. The first floor was completely remodeled in the 1960s when Franklin Savings and Loan moved onto the corner, according to the write-up.
CHS reported here on the plan from affordable developer Community Roots Housing to rebuild both the Booth Building and the E.H. Hamlin structure along E Pine “in the style of their original architecture, preserving neighborhood character while creating new space for critical housing and services.”
The original plan to preserve portions of the structures to meet the requirements of the Pike/Pine Conservation District’s incentive program had to be shelved after the Booth building exterior was found to contain asbestos. Community Roots says it initially explored preserving and rehabilitating the existing building, “but further investigation ultimately determined this was not a viable path forward.”
Someone should let the Booth Building ghost, who reportedly haunted the old place, know about the changes happening around them. The spirit has been described here and there over the years as a “playful spirit, who has been known to dump garbage cans, open random desk drawers, and walk loudly down the halls.”
Maybe you can stop by and say hello on your way to see the ghost sign before construction of the new building takes shape.
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I hope that gets preserved before some jerks tag that wall. That’s a great sign of old Seattle.
Ah yes now is the time to…complain about graffiti randomly. ok
Uh, do you know the meaning of the word “randomly”? Now is exactly the time to talk about preserving a piece of history.
But also, as the article suggests, the new construction will almost certainly cover the sign completely. So some kind of digital documentation is likely the best thing to do for now so that whenever the Odd Fellows building gets demo’d people will at least be aware of it.
This is wonderful! What a special gift. I only wish it could be preserved somehow.
Put a building in front of it?
Another example of a “ghost sign” is at the Russian Community Center (704 19th Ave E), which used to be the Roycroft Movie Theater back in the day. On the north side, there is an ancient sign that reads “Why not see the Picture here for less and avoid parking hassles downtown?” (or something like that). I went to movies there as a kid in the 1950s.
We live a few blocks away from there and I love that sign. How cool would it be if that was still a theater…
I smell a rat. They knocked down the building with dust going all over. The people working there didn’t even wear masks. We need an investigation.
I can guarantee that there are some rats in the pile of rubbish, no need to smell.
Asbestos exposure is usually only harmful if it takes place over a prolonged period of time, and generally in an enclosed & unventilated space.
This was an outdoor demolition, with someone spraying water over the site to prevent fibers from spreading — I’m not an expert but it looks to me like they followed EPA guidelines. You can Google something like “NESHAP asbestos demolition” for the rules about a project like this.