(The two companies merged during the Smith Tower's construction.) Ne Page, McKenny and Company served as the Electrical Contractor the Seattle Cornice Works created the cornice for the skyscraper. The Whitney Company was the General Contractor for the Smith Tower The Seattle Heating and Plumbing Company and the Rautman Plumbing and Heating were the Plumbing Contractors. Construction on the building's reinforced concrete retaining walls and foundations (consisting of 1,276 concrete piles each an average of 20 feet in length) had been completed by first floor steel framing was in place by that time, as well. Gaggin and Gaggin also studied Napoleon LeBrun and Sons' more recent and highly publicized Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Building (1909), one that Burns Smith was said to have admired. In form, the Smith Tower had the basic configuration of the iconic Singer Building (then the world's tallest), with a tower shaft elevated on a broader building block. It also served as a substantial Smith Family real estate investment in the rapidly growing city of Seattle, well-publicized in the press following the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. This tower would serve to advertise the Smith business enterprises, much the same way that architect Ernest Flagg's Singer Building (1908) embodied the power and dynamism of the Singer Sewing Machine Company then led by its ambitious president, Frederick Gilbert Bourne (1851-1919). 1908, when he conceived the idea of building the tallest skyscraper outside of New York City. Burns Smith had been living in Manhattan c. Smith and his son, Burns Lyman Smith (1880-1941), spent lavishly to create this tall landmark, between $1.25 and $1.7 million. Syracuse architects Gaggin and Gaggin designed this tower for fellow Syracuse resident, Lyman Cornelius Smith (1850-1910), a manufacturer of Ithaca Gun Company firearms and L.C. Whitney-Steen Company served as the demolition company. The firm of Gaggin and Gaggin formed officially in 1902, and the stimulus for its creation may have been the completion of Smith Hall at Syracuse.Ī 1-story, brick building previously stood on the 2nd Avenue and Yesler Way site, which was demolished in 1911. Smith Hall at Syracuse University, erected between 19. Gaggin and Gaggin had worked with Lyman Cornelius Smith previously, designing for him L.C. The Smith Tower's form recalled other skyscrapers built in New York City during the same period, well-known to the architects Edwin Hall Gaggin and Thomas Walter Gaggin of Syracuse, NY.

The tallest building standing before 1914 in the city was the Hoge Building, standing at 18 stories.

This 42-story tower dwarfed anything built in Seattle up to that time.

Smith tower for rent