Stories in Stone

Stories in Stone

 

 

 

Took a fascinating geological tour of Seattle Buildings led by David Williams, another smart guy from Colorado College. http://stories-in-stone.blogspot.com/ The tour  started with the earliest Pioneer Square buildings built with local sandstone. Many of these post 1889 Seattle Fire buildings relied on the stone as structural support, thus the shapely mass. The Smith Tower is supported by Granite blocks from Index, Washington,  and the interior marble, the most beautiful application in Seattle, is from Alaska. As we moved into the more modernized part of the city the stone shows up as a cladding with limestones from Indiana and granites from Minnesota. The Minnesota granite from Morton, with its wild rose and black color and crazy swirl pattern, was the primary contrasting stone used in exterior construction everywhere in the U.S. during the Art Deco Period.  We stopped by the Hyatt on Pike and 7th to check out the fossils in the Jura Grey limestone, from Germany, installed throughout the lobby and first floor. The most gleaming feature at the Hyatt, however, were not stone but the bronze Norberry Tile in the Hyatt’s elevator floors manufactured by Metaphor Bronze.