Photo of the Day: Pocket Park, Seattle

I don’t know the name of this park, just that I stumbled upon it from a highway overpass near the Grand Hyatt Seattle, where I was staying for a couple of nights on a business trip a couple of weeks ago. In any case, it was good to come across this unexpected stretch of green, at the lower end of the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Quote of the Day (Tom Robbins, on Why ‘Seattle Remains a Frontier Metropolis’)

“Fulfilling its evolutionary destiny, our Emerald City has been populated by a significant number of migrants, mavericks, and mutants: seed people, future people, people on the edge of thought, the edge of discovery, the edge of tomorrow. To some extent, Seattle remains a frontier metropolis, a place where people can experiment with their lives, and change and grow and make things happen.”—Novelist Tom Robbins, “Here in Geoduck Junction: Finding a Home Among the Migrants, Mavericks, and Mutants of the Pacific Northwest,” Seattle Weekly News, Oct. 9, 2006

It’s been a week since my return from a business trip to Seattle, and the time spent there—three nights, with less than an afternoon devoted to exploring the neighborhood around my hotel—did not match, in length or intensity, the full week of pleasure I experienced in the “Emerald City” on a vacation 18 years ago.

But I saw enough this time to confirm the essential truth of this observation by novelist Tom Robbins, including one city landmark that did not exist in its present form when I came here in 1997: the current, 11-floor incarnation of the Central Branch of the Seattle Public Library.

Now, the exterior of this intellectual center is not especially distinguishable from the other modernist office buildings in the city’s downtown. Nor am I a fan of everything on the inside of this building. (The “Red Floor” strikes me as more distracting than stimulating.)

But Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and former Seattleite Joshua Ramus, after looking at innovative libraries around the world and conferring with the library's board, staff and the public, did come up with the design for a building in the Internet age—a structure with some distinct advances over its predecessor:

*A high-tech book-handling system, operating largely out of public view, transports incoming titles to where they should be shelved.

* The new library has a capacity for more than 1.45 million books and materials—an increase of approximately a third over the old building.

*The total program area is 362,987 square feet, compared with 206,000 in the old building.

*The library has more than 400 computers for public use and wireless Internet access, compared with just 75 public computers in the old building.

Both inside and outside the library, you’ll see evidence that you are, indeed, in Seattle. A sign in back, for instance, speaks of water use—part of the sustainability initiative in a city that prides itself on its environmental consciousness. And, to make users really comfortable, as you can see in the picture accompanying this post, the library has provided a coffee bar.

Heck, even the original pioneers up here in the Pacific Northwest were glad to have some liquid refreshment at night around the campfire.

Photo of the Day: St. James Cathedral, Seattle

This past Sunday, while on a business trip to Seattle, I walked up the First Hill section of the city to attend 8 am Mass at St. James Cathedral. When it was dedicated in 1907, it certainly fulfilled Bishop Edward J. O’Dea’s charge to the architects that they design a structure "that must surpass anything in the West."

Even by virtue of its placement on this hill, the cathedral lifts parishioners and visitors out of their everyday realm.  Inside, the Renaissance style employed by architects Heins and LaFarge (who created the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City) does much the same—the result not just of the original design, but also of renovations in 1916, 1950 and 1994.