Could landmark designation save Seattle’s Memorial Stadium from demolition?

When Mayor Jenny Durkan announced a deal with Seattle Public Schools earlier this month – which includes a plan to demolish Memorial Stadium in the Seattle Center – no option was mentioned to instead preserve and renovate the 74-year-old facility.

The old stadium – officially called the Seattle High School Memorial Stadium – was built in 1947 to commemorate nearly 800 Seattle alums who died in World War II. At the east end of the stadium, across from a former large pedestrian mall that was turned into a parking lot by the Seattle Public Schools many years ago, is a memorial wall listing all of these names and where Seattle Center visitors can park their cars almost directly against.

When the mayor announced the demolition plans, the memorial wall was not mentioned – but at the request of KIRO Radio, city officials confirmed that the wall would be preserved as part of a new project.

But what if the wall was only part of the monument? What if the reality is that the entire stadium is the monument? In fact, the stadium operated as the Seattle High School Memorial Stadium for nearly four years before the wall was inaugurated in 1951.

As it turns out, this may not be just a pedantic argument or a split on heritage-preservation hair.

Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, architecture professor and architectural historian at the University of Washington, says that the late 1940s were all about facilities that served as monuments themselves – not just free-standing statues or shrines.

“In the post-World War II period, it was very typical for functional buildings and technical works to be designated as monuments instead of building separate buildings that served as monuments but had no other purpose,” Ochsner told KIRO Radio.

The stadium in today’s Seattle Center was designed by architect George Wellington Stoddard and was named “Seattle High School Memorial Stadium” even before the end of World War II. The suggestion for the name came from school board member James A. Duncan sometime before June 1945 and was then officially adopted by the board in February 1946.

Researcher Lee Corbin found several newspaper reports about the stadium before and during construction, showing how the entire complex was considered a memorial.

On March 2, 1947, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote: “The stadium is not only a huge mass of concrete surrounding a grid, it is also ultra-modern in every detail.”

This was four years before the wall of names was added.

Other excerpts Corbin found include the Seattle Times of February 3, 1946, which said, “The stadium was named in memory of the Seattle public school students who died in World War II.” On November 30, 1947, The Spokesman-Review of Spokane wrote: “The field is dedicated to the victims of World War II from Seattle and King Counties.”

Despite its role in honoring the war deaths of locals, Memorial Stadium is currently not listed on any historical register and has never been officially considered by the Seattle Landmarks Board.

Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, however, says the facility is easily considered a landmark under several official criteria. One reason for this is that the architect – George Wellington Stoddard – is a significant, if not well-known, figure in the Pacific Northwest. He also designed the Green Lake Aqua Theater, the South Stand of the Husky Stadium, the octagonal former gas station on Denny Way and Victory Square, the temporary memorial to the war dead erected downtown during World War II.

Ochsner says the architectural family tree is only part of the memorial stadium’s landmarks.

“It is certainly important to its cultural history as the center of so many different types of celebrations and activities. I mean, how many generations of Seattle residents went to this building for soccer games, graduation ceremonies, other ceremonies? ”Ochsner said. “And then it got another level of meaning through the role it played at the Century 21 World’s Fair and all of the ceremonies and activities that took place there.”

“The building clearly fulfills several criteria for the landmark award,” Ochsner continues. “It would also easily qualify for the National Register of Historic Places.”

Another researcher – retired Seattle Times writer Bill Kossen – uncovered other details about the stadium’s construction that could also support its landmark designation, including the fact that the 1947 concrete roof was the first of its kind to be over you Stadium was built. Two decades later, in 1967, Kossen discovered that Memorial Stadium was the first high school soccer field in the country to have artificial turf installed.

Chris Moore is Executive Director of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, the non-profit group that works to ensure that old buildings are not simply preserved as museum pieces, but also become relevant and dynamic parts of their community.

The day after the Foo Fighters were christened and a few days before the Seattle Kraken makes its home ice debut there, Moore sees many parallels between the original Seattle Center Coliseum – now known as the Climate Pledge Arena – and its rundown and neglected neighbor.

“It wasn’t that long ago that the demolition of the KeyArena was discussed,” said Moore. “You know, ‘It’s a white elephant. What can we do with it? The sonics are gone. It just sits there. It needs to be updated. We have to do something else. ‘ And take a look at it now. “

“And then to think that you now have this Memorial Stadium that literally reverberates, sort of a mirror of the KeyArena,” Moore continued. “And it was only completed 15 years before KeyArena.”

The two buildings date from distinctly different eras, says Moore, but their proximity means that they are architecturally and historically in a conversation or dialogue. And the success of the Climate Pledge Arena makes it clear that Memorial Stadium offers a lot of potential for a similarly creative approach to redevelopment and conservation.

In her announcement of the new plan, the mayor mentioned the shabby condition of the stadium.

“Students from across the district shouldn’t have to play in dilapidated facilities,” Mayor Durkan said in a press release. “We owe it to our city’s youth for generations to build a world-class facility in the heart of our changing Seattle Center.”

In a written statement to KIRO Radio, Jeff Murdock, director of heritage management for the nonprofit historic Seattle conservation group, said, “The poor condition of a property is not a factor in determining eligibility [for landmark designation]; it simply means that a property is suffering from delayed maintenance. “

The truth is that Memorial Stadium might look shabby, but it’s structurally safe and regularly used by thousands of visitors each year – and it has weathered major earthquakes in 1949, 1965, and 2001 too. Class facility in the heart of our changing Seattle Center “are not, as some may believe, mutually exclusive.

Chris Moore says that when he speaks of the tired state of the Memorial Stadium as the reason for the demolition, it sounds like KeyArena again.

“To talk about it, ‘Oh, it’s dilapidated, needs to be demolished, needs to go. It does not fit.’ Let’s not forget that these were the exact same conversations used to possibly justify the removal of KeyArena, which thankfully never happened, ”Moore told KIRO Radio.

The city of Seattle and the school district declined interview requests. In an email, Tim Robinson, spokesman for Seattle Public Schools, said it was too early to speak to the media.

“At this point we are waiting for interviews on the matter,” said Robinson. “This is mainly due to the fact that everything is still very early and there are no concrete plans yet.”

According to Mayor Durkan’s announcement, the potential vote is only four months away. That doesn’t make a conversation with the school district seem “very early”.

Indeed, Jeff Murdock of Historic Seattle said in his statement that the city “should submit a nomination to the Landmarks Preservation Board to validate the property as a city landmark BEFORE voters are asked to vote on a royalty to fund a replacement stadium “.

The tone and tone of Mayor Durkan’s announcement suggested that the demolition was a foregone conclusion, which is doing the war dead at the Seattle Public Schools, on whose behalf the stadium was built, a disservice. It also plays the city’s heritage preservation process that both public and private landowners must go through.

Jeff Murdock, of historic Seattle, touches on this too, as he writes: “We are consistently committed to ensuring that city agencies determine the historical significance of real estate before they hire designers and support developers for public projects. Instead of dealing with the monument protection ordinance in retrospect, the process can make faster decisions about whether a property should or could be renovated instead of demolished. “

Meanwhile, Queen Anne Historical Society’s chief executive Maureen Elenga emailed KIRO Radio that her group “is not opposed to the redevelopment of the Seattle High School Memorial Stadium site; but we want the memorial wall to be preserved and preferably to have a prominent place on the property. “

When asked whether or not society would support the preservation of the Memorial Stadium, Elenga wrote, “We will not have an opinion on possible plans until we have seen all the options.”

It is the “Until We See What All The Options Are” portion of Elenga’s email that best captures how the goal posts for the Seattle High School Memorial Stadium have moved consistently over the past few years when several Seattle mayors – including Greg Nickels, Ed Murray, and Tim Burgess – led various attempts to reach an agreement with the school district.

The next steps – not for the goal posts – are likely to be up to the City of Seattle and Seattle Public Schools, whether to speak to anyone about their plans and whether to choose – or be forced – to fully and sincerely explore the historical significance of the Memorial Stadium and the eligibility to be declared a landmark.

Chris Moore is intrigued by what might come next, especially given the community’s original intent more than 75 years ago for the entire stadium to honor local members of the greatest generation. How the community continues to respect and honor the memory of the Seattle alums who sacrificed their lives in World War II should be part of the discussion, especially given the negative attention recently paid to the destruction of Confederate memorials across the country has been, including in Washington.

“You can use it to open a whole different can of worms now when the national discussions are centered around war memorials,” said Moore. “But I think this one is probably on the right side of the story.”

You can hear Feliks on Seattle’s Morning News every Wednesday and Friday morning, read more about him here, and subscribe to the Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea, please send an email to Feliks here.