Fri, 10:19:
I have 43 photos of Seattle's Safeco Plaza dating back to 1992. I just browsed through them all, and this one I just took last Monday is the best. https://t.co/TyBfb14JhO
This building, at 630 ft and 50 floors, was the tallest in Seattle when it was constructed in 1969, edging out the title held by the Space Needle for seven years. At only 25 feet taller, for some time it earned the local nickname "The Box the Space Needle Came In," as noted many times by my late, great Auntie Rose.
Also: this building opened as "Seattle-First National Bank Building," when it was the headquarters of Seafirst Bank—incidentally the bank I used when I first opened my own checking account, in Pullman during college in 1994. It was later called the Seafirst Building, but by the time I spent a memorable weekend touring downtown skyscrapers with Auntie Rose and my grandparents in 1992, and for many years after, without any licensed name it was simply known as 1001 Fourth Avenue Plaza. Safeco has been headquartered here since 2006.
(Side note no one cares about: Seafirst had actually been owned by Bank of America since 1983, but the Seafirst brand was retired in 1999, thereafter defaulting to the Bank of America brand. This is the only reason I bank with Bank of America to this day, as Seafirst was just the option I had when first opening a bank account and I have never changed banks since. At the time, I had no idea it had any connection to one of the buildings whose elevators Auntie Rose took me joyriding up when I was 16.)
Now, as of 2023, Safeco Plaza is all of the 7th tallest building in Seattle. For some reason, in spite of its quite simple design, I have an odd fondness for it. Probably because of the historic details I just went through, I suppose.
