Tag: seattle

Seattle Stone: Lobby #2, Smith Tower onyx

In continuing my short tour of Seattle lobbies, I turn to what is one of the best known lobbies in the downtown area. Smith Tower is also one of Seattle’s more famous buildings. Opened on July 4, 1914, the 462-foot tall building was the tallest building west of Ohio at the time. Over the years, the mostly terra cotta clad edifice has borne the brunt of many incorrect claims. As a fine essay on the historylink.org web site reports, it was never the fourth tallest building in the world, or even outside of New York.

Despite not meeting the aspirations of some, Smith Tower does sport a rather handsome lobby. Two stones dominate, onyx marble from Mexico and marble from Alaska. This post will focus on the Mexican rock.

Onyx is a notoriously confusing stone. True onyx is a variety of quartz. It is sometimes referred to as layered chalcedony or black-and-white agate. The onyx used as building stone is not made of quartz but of calcite and is known as onyx marble. Because such calcareous onyx became popular in the United States through stone quarried near Mexico City, it is also called Mexican onyx, as well, no matter its point of origin. Onyx marble used in ancient Rome and by early Egyptians usually came from Algeria. All onyx marble is popular because of the colorful layering and ability to be highly polished. Color variation depends on the amount of iron and manganese and their oxidation states in the deposits, which become layered as they accumulate in pools.

The Smith Tower onyx panels are from Baja California from an area known as El Marmol. Like all onyx marble, it formed layer by thin layer in springs, in this case cold water springs. Other onyx marbles form in hot springs, too. They can also form as stalactites and stalactites. First quarried around 1893, the El Marmol deposits are about 160 miles southeast of Ensenada and 15 miles from the east coast of the peninsula. (One additional note. After posting this blog, I was reminded that the onyx in Smith Tower is also called Pedrara Onyx, in reference to the company that owned the quarries.)

The Spring at El Marmol (from the Tacoma World web site)

El Marmol achieved a bit of fame for its onyx marble schoolhouse, which was supposedly the only all onyx place of education in the world. Apparently the stones were not polished and by at least the 1950s, the weathered stones were drab and brown. As you can see from this modern shot, it’s not in very good shape.

The schoolhouse at El Marmol (from Tacoma World web site)

When geologist George Perkins Merrill visited the Baja quarries in the early 1890s he found the deposits quite pleasing. “Nothing can be more fascinating to the lover of the beautiful in stones than this occurrence, where huge blocks of material of almost ideal soundness, with ever varying shades of color and veination lie everywhere exposed in countless numbers…The colors are peculiarly delicate, and there is a wonderful uniformity in quality…The rose color is, so far as my present knowledge goes, quite unique and wonderfully beautiful.”

The quarry at El Marmol closed in the early 1960s. An article by naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch theorized that it was due to plastic. He wrote “As with so much that is coming in the world, there is a cheap substitute for something dearer and more beautiful.” Fortunately, we can still see the dear and beautiful at Smith Tower.

Next time, I will look at the Alaskan marble.

Good Old Cobblestones

President Obama has said that his stimulus plan will provide the “largest investment increase in our nation’s infrastructure since President Eisenhower created the national highway system half a century ago.” It will create hundreds of thousands of job for people rebuilding railways, bridges, and roads. While I applaud his concern about jobs and improved safety, I worry that in the mad rush to pave we may lose a bit of history—the handful of cobblestone roads still dotting Seattle.

A happy group of explorers trodding across one of Seattle’s last cobblestone streets

Between the 1890s and 1910s, sandstone cobbles were a a popular road-paving material in Seattle. The most commonly used varieties came from quarries in Wilkeson, a small town about 45 miles south of Seattle. Workers could easily cut the brick-sized blocks, which provided good traction for horses, although horse shoes did wear down the stone. And the stone cobbles lasted longer and created less of a mess than the mud or wood of the past. (Manhattan also has a few cobblestone streets made from the 450-million year old Quincy granite.)

Quincy Granite cobblestones in Greenwich Village

The Wilkeson sandstone lithified from thousands of feet of sand deposited 40 to 50 million years ago in the Eocene Period when western Washington was flat and subtropical. Palm trees, swamp cypresses, and tree-sized ferns grew in the moist (40-100 inches of rain), bayou-like environment. Waves from an ocean that spread to the west washed ashore on beachfront property, now covered by the urban metropolises along Puget Sound. The only mountains that existed rose far to the east along the Washington-Idaho border. Rivers and streams washed out of those mountains and dropped sand in a coastal lowland dotted with seasonal lakes, swamps, and lagoons.

In addition to sandstone cobbles, brick was another important paving material and can still be found on a few Seattle streets. Local manufacturers used a clay deposited in a proglacial lake, which formed in advance of the ice sheet that covered Seattle during the last Ice Age. A production capacity of 70,000,000 bricks a year made King County the largest producer of paving brick in the country. At one time, these bricks covered streets in Portland, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Los Angeles, as well as roads in Chile, Argentina, and India.

One other local building material, the Index granite, appears on local streets. It formed 34 million years ago during subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate under the North American continent. The Index was used primarily for curbs and can still be found in a few older neighborhoods of Seattle. (One way to get a feel for the age of a neighborhood is to look at the curbs. Old ones are granite; newer ones have concrete with a metal rim, particularly on corners; and modern ones are only concrete.)

According to the last official survey I could find, conducted in 1993, only 93 of these historic streets remain in Seattle; most have been paved over, their stories lost to drivers who don’t want the jarring ride. I do not mind them. I like the connection to the past and consider it a privilege to drive over the ancient cobbles and rustic bricks, although I try to take these roads when no else is in the car with me.