William H. Gates Hall (Seattle)

William H. Gates Hall is an academic building of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. William H. Gates Hall houses the University of Washington School of Law. The building is named for William H. Gates, Sr., a lawyer who served as a partner of the Preston Gates & Ellis law firm. Gates was a 1950 graduate of the UW School of Law.

Before the construction of Gates Hall, the University of Washington School of Law, the only public law school in the State of Washington, occupied Condon Hall, located away from the main campus of UW. The building never expanded, so as the UW School of Law grew, various departments of the law school were forced to occupy other buildings.

The Washington State Legislature, on two occasions, failed to provide the funds to expand the Condon building. At a later point the university decided that it could build a new administrative services building and then store extra administrative services that were previously spread across the university campus at Condon Hall. The university would use the cost savings to allow it to build a new law school.

In 1993 the Washington State Legislature gave the university funds to design a new law building. After university officials began a search for potential donors, William Henry "Bill Gates III offered to be a donor. He was interested in naming a building after his father William Henry Gates, Sr. In 1995 the state legislature approved the building of a new law facility. The state legislature approved a funding for $1.1 million for the building design. It was conditional on the University being able to, by July 1, 1997, raise $10 million from private sources.

Around 1996, when the project had conditional funding but no final approval, several critics, including academics and University District residents opposed the proposed building plan, arguing that UW was breaking its agreement with the city over how the UW campus should be developed, that it would remove one of the few remaining open spaces on campus, that it was a bad spending of educational dollars during a budget crisis, and that the project was "leapfrogged" over higher priority projects. The university originally planned to construct a replacement law facility on Parrington Green, but after outcry that lead to almost 600 e-mail messages expressing disfavor with the plan being sent during the first twelve days of February 1996, an administration committee revealed a revised plan that would reduce the building's footprint by about a third of the original plan, saving more of the park. The university later changed the location to the N1 Parking Lot, near the Burke Museum. This decision prevented the destruction of a group of trees, and in the words of Sherri Olson of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "define[d] a new quad."

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