Skateboarders and cyclists will continue to rule Interlaken Drive this summer as SDOT conducts a geotechnical study that will not be completed until September. Until then, the damaged road will remain off-limits to motor vehicles, according to Rick Sheridan at SDOT:

Since the closure, Seattle Parks and Recreation, the Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities have been working together on the best solution for ensuring visitors and residents can move around safely, and protecting the city’s infrastructure.  That portion of Interlaken was closed to cars due to slide/erosion activity that caused soil to settle underneath part of the roadway.  

The city has initiated a geotechnical study that will identify underlying geological conditions and help us determine ways to resolve the problem.  We need to complete that analysis before we can consider reopening the road or proceed with any other course of action.  We expect to have information from the analysis and more detailed options defined by September 2011.

We are sending out a mailing to nearby properties to alert them to the geotechnical study and our current timeline, while also providing them contacts in each of the involved departments.  Residents should see those letters within the next week or so. 

As we reported in March when the road closed, water flowing underneath the roadway washed away the foundational soil that kept the road structural. Cracks several inches in width appeared overnight, and the roadway was closed that day. Though the cracks have been patched with asphalt, the roadway remains closed until SDOT knows more.

Photo of cracks before patching, courtesy of the Parks Department

Based on this reporter’s observations as someone who has regularly ridden a bicycle on the road both before and after the closure, the number of people strolling, walking pets and riding longboards on the closed stretch seems to have increased. Though I never witnessed any conflicts between road users on this roadway, more people walk in the middle of the street rather than along the edge since the road became off-limits to motor vehicles. More dog owners seem confident enough to let their pets off-leash, and the number of people riding bicycles and jogging on the road has definitely gone up.

While no definitive statistics are available, CHS also isn’t aware of any increases in emergency calls to the area. So, yes, wear your helmets and keep that trend going.

Motorcycle users seem to be conflicted about what to do with the closure. One woman out on a joyride stopped me near the lower road closure sign and asked, “So, how closed is it?” I said, “Well, it’s pretty closed.” I think she turned around, but I’m not sure.

When you propose a 75-foot building covered in solar panels that intends to handle all its energy, water and waste needs on-site, your city may not have a permitting and design review process spelled out and ready to fit your project. As planning for the Cascadia Center moves forward, the project has at times needed to create its own path through the city process.

One example: The building’s proposed solar arrays. Even after removing a large south-facing solar panel from the building’s design, the remaining panel on the roof is so large that it hangs over the sidewalk right-of-way. But the city does not have a mechanism for permitting such a use of public space.

“They don’t have a photovoltaic review committee in the city yet,” said Chris Rogers, CEO of the real estate firm Point 32. His firm and the Bullitt Foundation are behind the Cascadia Center project.

Any project that overlaps with the public right-of-way requires some kind of review process, so the city is using the process typically applied to sky bridges. The Cascadia Center project will have to receive that permit on top of gaining the standard design review approval.

However, the project will have one fewer panel to worry about as it moves through the review phase. Earlier plans for the building included a large south-facing solar panel, but designers believe the building will not need the extra energy it would have generated after all, and it has been removed from the design.

“We’ve been able to eliminate that, which is really good news,” said Rogers. It’s good news because the building will require fewer materials than originally anticipated. The original design included the panel to give the building a safety net to make sure it generated enough energy, but planners decided it was not needed after recalculating how much energy the building and its tenants would require.

The changes were not prompted by a recent appeal heard by the Seattle Hearing Examiner in mid-April, said Rogers. Hearing Examiner Sue Tanner ruled against most of the arguments made by owners of the nearby Madison Court apartment complex, upholding the Department of Planning and Development’s decision to issue permits for increased building height. The Hearing Examiner also rejected claims that the building’s large solar panels do not meet necessary requirements of the city’s Living Building Challenge pilot program because they hang over public right-of-way.

The Cascadia Center project is an attempt to create a “living building” that will be among the most energy-efficient office buildings in the world (though some have argued it could be better). Aside from using as many local and non-toxic building materials as possible, the building will also give tenants tools to track their energy usage. If a tenant would like to use more energy than they are allotted, there will be a marketplace of sorts where they can trade with other tenants in the building, according to Crosscut. This means the building tenants will have to work together to achieve the goal of energy neutrality.

If there’s one question guaranteed to cause most Capitol Hill folk to think carefully before answering (and even then, usually hesitantly), it’s got to be this one: Pike, or Pine? Quick! – Toys In Babeland – Pike or Pine?? (Well, uh, I used to pass by it on the way to QFC, so it must be the south one – wait, was that before or after I turned near R-Place? – after, I think, which means it’s not the one with N in it so… Pike – I think?) The Question has even inspired its own quiz show parody.

After living here a few years, I eventually figured that it’s easier to just refer to both as the same street, a notional Pikeorpine Street (“The sandwich place? It’s definitely on Pikeorpine.”), as though it’s not actually two separate streets, but perhaps really a quantum superposition of two streets that only resolves into one street or the other when you actually set foot there. (One benefit of this Pikeorpine technique is that it still works even if someone swaps the signs around as an April Fools’ Day prank…)

But it wasn’t always that way. The portions of Pike and Pine East of Melrose were originally known as Choat (or Choate) and Gould streets – and they weren’t even originally connected to their downtown counterparts. Choate and Gould initially grew out of Broadway, and only later on – with a bit of regrading – did they meet up with the actual downtown Pike and Pine streets.

Back in the late 1800’s, Seattle was a crazy patchwork of land claims, with much of the area around what would eventually become Pike and Broadway being claimed by a John A Nagle (pronounced ‘nail’). As these claims were platted, some used names consistent with the surrounding plats, others didn’t: what would eventually become Pike street changed name from Pike St to Choat (or Choate) St to Blakely St, back to Choate (or Choat) St and finally Johnson (or Johnston) Ave as it headed Eastwards, while Pine changed from Pine to Gould to Mastick, back to Gould and ended as Warren streets.

All that changed in 1895, when city finally had enough, and with The Great Renaming of 1895 (not it’s official name – but it does sound much better than City Ordinance 4044…) declared that all of Choat(e), Blakely and so on would be known as Pike, and that all of Gould and co would be considered to be Pine – and thus in resolving one problem, another (though perhaps lesser) problem was born.

All the same, while it might have been slightly easier to remember Choat apart from Gould (and would have resulted in signage less prone to April Fool’s pranks), the “Choat/Gould neighborhood” just doesn’t have the same ring to it that Pike/Pine has.

Brendan McKeon is a budding amateur historian and volunteer tour guide with the Seattle Architecture Foundation, and will be giving their Pike/Pine walking tour this weekend, and at three other dates this season.

Memorial Day, a day to remember those who have died in service to their country.

Many towns and villages began to honor those who fought and died during the War Between the States. Some while the war ground on and some when the smoke finally cleared exposing the horrific sacrifices of so many.

“…Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General order #11. The day was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May…”

So many lives cut short in service to their country.
Worldwide there are similar celebrations honoring, and immortalizing, people who gave their lives for a cause they deemed greater than the continuation of their life.
Lives sacrificing all that could be.
That moment with a loved one embracing the future, as if you owned it, gone in a flash of unheard light.
Taking your child’s hand as you cross the road erased from the future, by present urgencies, demanding you do things you never believed possible.
The stories, true and fabricated, that mold a family history, now include an abrupt footnote for many.
All gone in the snap of uncaring time!

It is right to honor so many that gave up so much. Lives traded so the present generation can struggle with creating a world that doesn’t need armed conflict as a ready resolution to disputes.

Thank you for fighting for Irish freedom, for the Union Army, against the Kaiser and his hordes, against the Nazis and the Japanese.
I only knew a few of you – I wish I had known all of you.
Thank you to those friends who lost so much of their innocence in Viet Nam. Some stayed there forever, and some returned to their homes trying to carry a burden only those who were there comprehend.
Past and present conflicts tearing at our youth, chewing them up faster than they can be raised to serve.

Honor life while rejecting death.

Perhaps the greatest honor we can bless the dead with is the promise to quit killing them in the future.

Not sure what happened

I don’t know the story, but police at scene said only minor injuries resulted.

It wasn’t all that long ago that America faced hordes of people wandering the streets looking for food, shelter and a job. 
Those “unwashed” looked for any kind of shelter – any kind of job.

Here we are, decades away from the “Great Depression”, watching more and more people hunker down in tent cities, overburdened shelters, alley ways, car parks, under bridges and overpasses, looking for food, shelter and a place to feel safe.

Presumably, we learned something about the causes of poverty and homelessness during those decades of reflection, study, and uncounted, and unread, dissertations on the root causes etc. etc. etc.

Seattle is mid-way through a “Ten Year Plan” to end homelessness. So far it has been a failure. Failure, well, I guess, that depends on whom you ask.
Yes, more shelter space is available and more social services are chasing the same set of challenges as they manage a bigger population of people needing a place to call home.
Most of the experts claim more affordable housing is the answer, combined with support facilities to meet the needs of those in dire circumstances.
Sounds good.
Is that the actually answer? I don’t know.

I keep thinking about a question a lady, with a lifetime of experience with the poor, asked me one day.
“When do you think it is that one becomes homeless?”
She wasn’t talking about the moment someone is actually without shelter. She was talking about that moment when a person integrates the acceptance of “homelessness” into their very core.
I’ve thought a lot about the question, being somewhat embarrassed that I don’t have some sage reply.

I think I have concluded that education is the ultimate answer to this and other societal challenges.
Relevant education to the present crop of lower and middle school students giving them basic skills to avoid seeing themselves as homeless in the future. If they learn how to honor themselves, armed with a quiver of critical thinking skills, they may avoid integrating the “I deserve this” syndrome that brings so much grief to so many.
 Comprehending how the system works, and the role they played delivering them to their present situation, challenges many on the streets and in shelters. Excluding those suffering from mental illness, chronic additions, debilitating illnesses, war, and natural calamities you may find many who just don’t have the education to see options. Options that might help them move into a different way of looking at themselves as they run into one barrier after another within the system.

Our schools are not delivering, to the mainstream citizen, critical thinking skills that help one reflect on any given situation analyzing objectively an exit strategy.

Daily headlines point to a population that may be, as a friend in Ireland put it, “Arrogantly ignorant.”
Some chase their ignorance while the schools, administrators, clerics of all stripes; parents and un-invested neighbors allow sub-standard education to take place at the neighborhood school.

I will be attending a graduation ceremony next week where a number of the graduating students are unprepared for the next level of educational challenges.
I know what will happen to those students without some “divine” intervention.
These kids, like those in shelters, deserve better!

Maybe its time to dust off a popular song from “back in the day.”

      Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,”
lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931)

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,

When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.

They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,

Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.

Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;

Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,

Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,

Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,

And I was the kid with the drum!

Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.

Why don’t you remember, I’m your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,

Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,

Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,

And I was the kid with the drum!

Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.

Say, don’t you remember, I’m your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?

While much effort in architectural design — and its evaluation — revolves around the exterior of buildings, it is the interiors that have the most intimate impact on our lives. This dichotomy is understandable, as the exteriors of buildings, and their surrounding streetscape and landscape are fully within the public gaze. We must not, however, forget the interiors behind the facades, especially those that have the special characteristic of a ’welcoming patina’, a quality resulting from age and/or use that make one feel especially comfortable within them. In addition to qualities of age and use, I would add vernacular design, the resourcefulness of the interior’s designer’s ability (professional or otherwise) to assemble disparate, often overlooked elements in successful and unique ways. Driven by a lack of resources (and, perhaps with a conscious eye to resisting the corporate, sterile design that pervades our society), these artisans craft a pleasing aesthetic experience from materials that may have otherwise been discarded by others. They resist the impulse to make something ‘better’ by giving it a fresh coat of paint, a shiny polish, or, by replacing it with something new, and instead revel in incorporating (or letting be) worn paint, mis-matched furnishings, and unfinished walls. Art figures in as well, be it oil on canvas or discarded bottle caps.

On Capitol Hill we are blessed not only with a fine urban (exterior) street-scape, but also with many patinaed/vernacular interiors that were not necessarily designed by architects or interior designers, but perhaps by the owners, tenants, artists, and patrons of the space themselves. Interiors by happenstance, as it were. Thus formed, our shops, restaurants, cafes, and theaters reveal the brush strokes of their many creators, including that most ineffable of characteristics, the patina of time. As Capitol Hill prepares for its next round of development, it is precisely these slightly worn and dusty places that are the types of spaces that we will pine for the most should we lose them, as they are the most difficult to re-create.

Bauhaus Cafe is as fine an example of a welcoming patina and vernacular design as one could find on the Hill. In February 2002, when I was in Seattle for a job interview, Bauhaus cafe was the first Capitol Hill business I entered, and I remember it well. It not only sold me on Seattle, but especially on Capitol Hill, for any neighborhood that could support such a vibrant, gorgeous, interior was certainly where I wanted to live. Three weeks later I left Manhattan for Seattle.

(Images: Schemata by permission to CHS)

There was obviously design intent and careful consideration in Bauhaus’s layout, yet it feels as if it evolved over time, and has a great Northwest vernacular; it is as if it were shaped by the customers and baristas within, with their collective energy somehow contributing to a space that was meant to be.

In addition to its patina and vernacular, Bauhaus Cafe also has a nice variety of spatial types. From the large, main cafe space with its large windows fronting Pine Street, to the more intimate mezzanine and the still more cozy western sliver of a space that looks west, over Melrose Avenue. Finding space where available and making it work, is I suppose another quality of this kind of space. Divorced from planning done by remote corporate headquarters, such spaces adapt to the eddies and flows of their environment, grounding them to their site in a manner impossible to achieve without recognizing the potential in eccentric space.

There is a fine array of materials defining Bauhaus’s spaces. The most robust is the wood of the grand bookshelf, which even includes one of those cool rolling ladders. The size of the wall provides an excellent and generous space from which to display the art work that hangs against it. The language of the bookcase nicely morphs into that of the staircase that leads to the mezzanine, which has a classic, load bearing masonry wall on its southern end, and a guard rail/wall affording one a prospect from which to look out over the main cafe space. And though there is an amazing amount of variety within a relatively compact space, the tones and materials blend together in a way so as not complete with each other or for attention. The dark floors, walls, and furniture, emphasize their contrast with the large bright windows. Glare, usually a nuisance and detractor from a space, here heightens one’s awareness of the textures and spatial variety.  So complete is the Bauhaus experience, that even it fading exterior sign and crooked storefront proudly proclaim its patina to all who pass.

Although relatively new in its present location, Bimbos Cantina has many of the above said qualities, yet in a more festive, polychromatic display. Here the interior is an apt reflection of Bimbos eclectic and tasty offerings. No muted browns and blacks, as at Bauhaus, but vibrant and bright colors reflecting both the food and patrons (who are always a fixture around its welcoming bar). Empty fruit cases, dime-store piñatas, and (every color of the rainbow) sombreros adorn the interior, with an understanding of execution and display of creativity that no suburban, theme-restaurant could ever hope to achieve. And perhaps that is because at Bimbos, it is not a theme at all, but an exuberant expression of those who created it — an earnest expression of the people who both own it and work it  – no a foreign expression of one who does not live the themes display.

Bimbos, by the way, is a CHS advertiser.

Of particular fancy are the bottle-caps, re-purposed in as many ways as there are colors of the caps themselves. I will need to take note over my upcoming visits if these are a dynamic work whose breadth expands with each emptying cerveza. It is more than the objects themselves that are interesting, in fact one could argue that taken singly, they have no real interest in all and would actually be akin to the aforementioned suburban thematic restaurant. What differentiates Bimbo’s and other like establishments on the Hill in their use of objet trouvé is in their compositional arrangement, where either through their repetition or assemblage (into forms far divorced from their original), they take on a new and visually pleasing appearance. Such insight into the latent potential of fruit cases is certainly beyond the grasp of an Applebees or Chili’s.

By no means are the two above examples even close to representing the depth of Capitol Hill’s patinaed interiors –they just happen to be the two I visited. So readers, please offer me your favorite places, with an eye toward continuing this call to action, a call to conserve the best Capitol Hill has to offer.

John Feit is an architect on Capitol Hill, and works at Schemata Workshop. He blogs frequently on design and urbanism, with a focus on how they relate to and effect the Capitol Hill community. This post originally appeared on the Schemata blog but we have been given permission to share the work here on CHS.