History Intertwined

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In 1962 Seattle architect Paul Thiry did the design of some of the buildings at the Worlds Fair. Just as a side note, he also designed a house less than a mile from my home, on Marine View Drive, in Arbor Heights ( image above). The image of the NW Rooms refers to a series of rooms in a building Thiry designed. Today those rooms are no longer named NW Rooms, but are being used by SIFF and The Vera project, among others.

One of the rooms was called The Nisqually Room. In 1970, a band I was in played one or maybe two nights for some event ( I’ve been told it was a after-concert party for the All City Band in Seattle. I think we owed the music teacher of our high school a favor for letting us practice in his home basement and school music room. Mr. Terpenning was only a few years older than us and was supportive of what we were doing-which didn’t seem too odd at the time, but now……?). That was probably the largest room we ever played.  The ceiling was so high the sound went everywhere at once and kind of morphed into something long and echoing.

The article in the link does not say what the Nisqually Room morphed into over the years. It may have been  combined with an adjacent room. I have walked up and down the steps and around this set of rooms and my memory says one thing and the physical structures say another.

Anyways, I thought it was interesting that my history and that of Paul Thirys’ met 8 or so years after his design and contribution to the Worlds Fair in 1962.

The House on the Hill: Pt. II

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My second visit to the House on the Hill in South Park, Seattle. Due to waist-high debris it was impossible to get more than a couple of feet inside the house. The interior is severely burned; it smells and is very unsafe. On the outside there is broken glass everywhere in addition to piles of debris. At one time this was a house with a view of Downtown Seattle in the distance as well as the Duwamish River nearby. I don’t know what “Skin Trap House” means, so if anyone has any ideas…. feel free to comment. The ground floor of the interior looks more like a dumping ground than anything else; perhaps after the fire people just repurposed the house? A good percentage the debris is not fire damaged. The image of the stairs leading to the second floor I found most appealing and engaging.

Before the Storm

Version 3View from a hill in South Park, Seattle, looking north with downtown Seattle in the background. Took this minutes before the storm hit. With no warning the wind and rain started and I had to abandon the shoot.More photos from this hill in the following days.