May 28, 2009
Architecture students propose redesigns for three historic Seattle fire stations
OK, so what do you do with an old fire station that no longer works for fighting fires but those honking big front doors have to be kept because of historic preservation rules?
You get some architecture students at the UW to come up with some nifty designs.
Students in Adaptive Reuse of Historic Fire Stations, an upper-division undergraduate course taught by Architecture Professor Sharon E. Sutton, devised new plans for three Seattle fire stations. The city plans to sell the buildings because they lack space for today’s larger, better designed equipment. New stations are being built in the same vicinity.
“We thought creative ideas might help buyers get an idea about what might
be done with the buildings and thus increase their appeal. These ideas could also help in our meetings with the community,” said Hillary Hamilton, manager of property disposition for the Fleets and Facilities Department at the city of Seattle. Hamilton estimated that the old stations will be marketed sometime between 2010 and 2012.
Reuse presents a challenge, however, as the buildings are specialized. They’ve also been designated historic landmarks, which means facades cannot be significantly altered.
The Sutton teams, each composed of two to four students, presented their work to city planners and other local professionals earlier this spring.
One team redesigned Fire Station #6, built in 1932 at Yesler Way and 23rd Avenue South. A combination of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne, it’s part of the Central District.
As research for their designs, team members learned about the neighborhood’s racial diversity, its history in the African American community and its largely residential composition.
They checked out other renovated fire stations, such as the one on 15th Avenue East, which now houses a video store and an architecture office.
They studied Fire Station #6 itself: 8,000 square feet of clean-lined concrete punctuated with red doors and an exterior corona of lighting bolts.
They then drew detailed plans for four reuses: a community market, a jazz club, a movement studio and a transit center.
The market would include a cafe, food stalls, a bakery, a delicatessen and a garden center. The jazz club would include a concert hall, a restaurant, and live/work apartments. The movement studio would combine dance and physical fitness with nutrition and physical therapy.
The transit center would provide for buses, scooters, bikes and Zip cars. To reinforce the center as a gathering space, the transit center would include a café and retail stores. To encourage bicycling, it would have bike storage, a repair shop and a ramp next to stairs so bikes could accompany their owners around the building.
As team member Ted Wegrich watched traffic at the corner of Yesler and 23rd Avenue, a transit center became an obvious choice, but reconfiguring a historic landmark was hard: “I had a building already in place,” he said, “and I had to figure out how to fill an empty building with life and character.” He and all members of the studio also had to bring the buildings up to code while retaining their historic nature. As part of his work, Wegrich created smaller, more human-friendly doors within the ones for fire trucks.
For Fire Station #37, a Mission Revival structure designed for southwest Seattle in 1925, team members proposed a specialty bakery (cupcakes!) or a mixed-use cooperative market.
For Fire Station #38, a combination Mission Revival/Moderne structure built in Ravenna in 1930, team members suggested a local foods restaurant. They also proposed cohousing, a type of intentional community composed of private homes and extensive common facilities, or an educational center focused on energy resources.
Beth Mitchell, who proposed cohousing, noticed the community focus of the neighborhood and that the open space in the center of the fire station would lend itself to communal living. The challenge lay in adding apartments while keeping the building in scale with its neighbors.
Sutton said the fire station project benefited both city and students. The city now has drawings that illustrate redevelopment — plans they can show both neighbors and potential buyers. The students got to work with city staff on a timely project; they also had the thrill of presenting their work at City Hall.
“We need more town/gown projects,” Sutton said.
