Rainier Tower
- Architect
- Minoru Yamasaki
- Year
- 1977
- City
- Seattle, WA
Rainier Tower is Minoru Yamasaki's answer to a simple problem: how to put a 41-story office tower on a downtown block without swallowing all the ground-level space. Completed in 1977 at 1301 Fifth Avenue, the 514-foot skyscraper rises from an 11-story, 121-foot concrete pedestal that tapers toward the ground like an inverted pyramid, freeing the base for a retail plaza and greenery.
the building
The inverted pedestal. Yamasaki narrowed the tower's base rather than its top, tapering the 121-foot concrete pedestal down toward street level so the building's footprint barely touches the ground — a deliberate trade meant to preserve downtown greenery and open more of the block to a shopping plaza rather than a solid tower base.
Rainier Square below. The tower originally sat above Rainier Square, an underground shopping mall connecting to One Union Square and owned by the University of Washington. That mall was demolished in 2017, decades after the tower itself was finished.
the architect
Minoru Yamasaki also designed the original World Trade Center in New York City and the IBM Building, which sits across the street from Rainier Tower — placing two of his Seattle works on the same intersection.
significance
The building and its underground mall changed names along with their owners: named for Rainier Bank, then Security Pacific after a 1980s merger, then renamed back to the more familiar Rainier Tower in 1995 at the University of Washington's request. The Rainier Square mall beneath it was demolished in 2017.
nearby
- Fairmont Olympic Hotel
- IBM Building
- Seattle Tower
- Cobb Building
- 1411 Fourth Avenue Building
- YWCA Building