OH, TO HAVE BEEN a fly on that wall in 1909, when firearm and typewriter magnate Lyman Cornelius Smith of Syracuse, N.Y., proposed building a 14-story skyscraper in Seattle. His son Burns, 29, must have nodded patiently before dropping an inspired bombshell.
“Let’s supersize it,” urged the younger Smith (here, of course, we paraphrase). What better promotion for a maker of office machines, he reportedly said, than a record-breaking office building? Rivaling Manhattan’s Singer, Metropolitan and Woolworth buildings — then the world’s tallest — would be front-page news nationwide.
What’s more, Burns reminded his father that speculator John Hoge already had begun planning his own 18-story high-rise. A significantly taller Smith column might thumb its nose at Hoge’s lesser stack for years to come. Fiercely competitive, Lyman Smith gave a hearty thumbs-up.
From the get-go, the Smiths applied their powers of persuasion, Lyman dazzling the Seattle City Council with grand visions. The council formally resolved that city government buildings would remain within a four-block radius of the Smith property, clinching its central location and future relevance. A supportive Mayor Hiram Gill made sure that building permits were quickly granted.
A Syracuse architectural firm, Gaggins and Gaggins, completed plans for the $1.5 million steel and concrete edifice — a 21-floor base topped by a 14-floor tower and pyramidal cone that contained, claimed its builders, seven additional (if improbable) floors, for a fish-tale total of 42 stories.
On Nov. 5, 1910, before construction began, the 60-year-old elder Smith died unexpectedly after a short illness. A Seattle Times obituary lauded his “quick insight into the heart of things” and investment of a third of his fortune in “the future possibilities and present desirability of this city.”
His structure climbed to the sky. Crowds of admiring Seattleites (dubbed “sidewalk superintendents”) gaped upward, marveling at “cowboys of the air” who attached glazed terra-cotta panels. A local doctor warned that neck injuries might increase. Wags competed to name potential ailments. Top contenders: “crickitus,” “stretchitis” and “rubberosis.”
Come dedication day, July 4, 1914, Burns Smith welcomed thousands to his “cloud cleaver,” at 522 feet, the tallest in the West. The “gleaming white pile,” said The Times, represented “the confidence … which typifies Seattle spirit and growth.”
At its crest, an 8-foot-wide globe of glass and bronze “flashed the hour and quarter hour in red, white and blue.” Mariners approaching across Puget Sound proclaimed the newly minted icon “a beacon to the world.”
Although it’s dwarfed today by modern giants, can anyone say that the Smith Tower, having just marked its 110th anniversary, has lost any of its opening luster?
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