Federal Office Building (Seattle, Washington)
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Federal Office Building
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Old Federal Building, September 2007
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| Location | 909 1st Ave., Seattle, Washington |
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| Coordinates | 47°36′16″N 122°20′6″W / 47.60444°N 122.33500°WCoordinates: 47°36′16″N 122°20′6″W / 47.60444°N 122.33500°W |
| Area | 1.2 acres (0.49 ha) |
| Built | 1932 |
| Architect | Wetmore, James A. |
| Architectural style | Art Deco, Modernistic |
| NRHP Reference # | 79003155 |
| Added to NRHP | April 30, 1979 |
The Federal Office Building, Seattle, Washington is a historic federal office building and courthouse located at Seattle in King County, Washington. It is the courthouse for the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.
According to local tradition, the Federal Office Building in Seattle is located on the site where city founders A.A. Denny, William Bell, and C.D. Boren docked their boat after making initial surveys of Puget Sound and its harbors in 1851. On June 6, 1889, the Great Seattle fire, which destroyed more than 64 acres (260,000 m2) of the commercial district, started in a cabinet shop at the site of the Federal Office Building.
Seattle rebuilt after the fire, and in 1897 its port became the "Gateway to Alaska" for steamships bearing prospectors bound for Alaska and the Klondike Gold Rush. The city's population burgeoned, and the federal government decided to consolidate the location of its services. In 1928, Congress approved more than $2 million for site acquisition and construction. Officials selected a site bounded by Madison and Marion streets and First and Western avenues. The building was designed between 1930 and 1931 by the office of James A. Wetmore, acting supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury Department. One of the earliest federal buildings in the Art Deco style of architecture, the building's design was a departure from the more traditional styles of Classical Revival and Beaux Arts Classicism and a step toward more modern architectural styles that were gaining popularity. However, the building retains conventional symmetrical massing and proportion.
Construction was completed in 1933 by the Murch Construction Company of St. Louis, Missouri. The building used substantial amounts of aluminum from smelters along the nearby Columbia River. It was the first building in Seattle designed specifically to house offices for the federal government. Among its first tenants were 52 federal agencies, the largest of which was the Department of the Treasury.
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