L. C. Smith Building (Smith Tower)
- Architect
- Gaggin & Gaggin
- Year
- 1914
- Style
- Neoclassical
- City
- Seattle, WA
Smith Tower was built on the fortune of Lyman Cornelius Smith, who made his money manufacturing firearms and typewriters, though he died in 1910 before construction finished and his son Burns Lyman Smith saw it through. Completed in 1914 as the L.C. Smith Building — it wasn't renamed Smith Tower until 1929 — the 38-story, 462-foot Neoclassical tower designed by Gaggin & Gaggin was, at completion, among the tallest skyscrapers outside New York City.
the building
Height records. At 462 feet, Smith Tower was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River until Kansas City's Power & Light Building overtook it in 1931, and it remained the tallest building on the entire U.S. West Coast for nearly half a century — until the Space Needle passed it in 1962.
Gold Rush money, Eastern financiers. The tower's origins trace to the Klondike Gold Rush, when Seattle attorney James Clise, representing New York capital interests, helped bring Eastern financing to the city — the wave of investment that eventually built the tower.
the style
Built in the Neoclassical style in 1914, the tower dressed an early skyscraper in a classical vocabulary rather than the Gothic or Art Deco language more common on tall buildings of the era.
More on Neoclassicalthe architect
Smith Tower was designed by the firm Gaggin & Gaggin.
significance
Smith Tower is an individually designated Seattle City Landmark (#156). It was among the tallest buildings outside New York City when it opened in 1914, the tallest west of the Mississippi until 1931, and the tallest on the West Coast until the Space Needle surpassed it in 1962.