After 61 years, could PacSci’s leaky reflecting pool become a meadow?

AS AN 11-YEAR-OLD, one of my indelible experiences at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair (yours, too, if you attended?) came on a mocked-up, old-time Western street inside the U.S. Science Pavilion. The ruse was amusing but unsettling: Walking on a wooden ramp, I headed downhill. But adjacent storefronts slanted sharply forward, bending my mind to think I was climbing uphill.

This life-size optical illusion captivated local and international media. Even renowned British journalist and later TV host Alistair Cooke wrote that the exhibit produced “slight nausea” for visitors to the pavilion.

Inducing similar disorientation now is a plan hatched by the same elegant and beloved shrine to science, which, postfair, was renamed the Pacific Science Center and is newly rebranded “PacSci.”

PacSci is posing scenarios to transform its rectangular rear pool, the one behind its five famous curved arches. Several preliminary schemes call for filling the 20,500-square-foot basin with — no illusion — a waterless meadow.

The rationale is to remedy massive water leaks plaguing PacSci’s 61-year-old pair of pools. “Patchwork” repairs cost $170,000 a year, and complete restoration would run a whopping $17 million, says Will Daugherty, PacSci president and CEO. The pools, he says, face “catastrophic failure.”

The meadow plan, he says, is grounded in respect for PacSci’s original architect, the late Minoru Yamasaki, and for Northwest-flavored science. “We understand our responsibilities as stewards” for a “magical setting,” Daugherty says, and a replacement meadow could stopper a long-term financial drain while showcasing indigenous plantings. “Our community wants their science center to look to the future,” he says. “Adding life to the courtyard will help us meet these community needs.”

A big hurdle is the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board, from which PacSci sought and received protective landmark status in 2009-10. In that context, PacSci holds prestige as one of only five structures among the city’s 400-plus official landmarks to have met all six of Seattle’s landmark criteria. Unsurprisingly, during a 100-minute PacSci briefing on Feb. 15, several landmarks board members said they doubted they would approve meadow-izing the rear pool.

Nor are other preservationists keen on it. Eugenia Woo, of Historic Seattle, says the interplay of PacSci’s pools, buildings and arches is indispensable to its appeal. To plug the rear basin, she says, would be as preposterous as infilling the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool in Washington, D.C.

A meadow also could run afoul of already-disbursed state heritage capital grants that require PacSci to preserve its historic features, says Jay Baersten of the Washington State Historical Society. In addition, the plan has generated vigorous online debate.

We’ll see, but this is one plan that might end up all wet.