View From The Top : Seattle

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It was around 2008, I planned to do a Coffee Table Book kind of series about cities where I lived or visited. But the idea was little different, rather a new way of seeing the city. I conceived it as “View From The Top’. A very simple idea, go to few high-rise buildings in the town, spend a complete day (rather night also) and capture the mood of city in the vast expanse. At that time, I was in a rather high profile job, handling print, visual and internet media on 24x7 basis. So, this idea remained an idea. In between, I traveled many more cities across the continents but some how the project taken back seat due to my engagement in writing fiction and a very big project on Vedanta.

I have been to Seattle numerous times, but never found out that you can go up this building to an actual observation deck. I tell you, you have to go here if you want the best views of Seattle. Yesterday I had occasion to visit Columbia Center, a 76 story building in the down town Seattle city and the old idea started taking shape. The reason was equally tempting, The Center has a Sky View Observatory on its 73rd  floor.

The elevator takes you non-stop from first floor to the 73rd floor in few second. At 902 feet it offers the tallest public viewing area in the Pacific Northwest. We were on the top of Seattle, even the Space Needle was also looking dwarf from here. The weather was just right, clouds were here and there but part of sky was clear paving way to sun shine and good visibility. The deck is round shaped so provides a 360 degree panoramic view of downtown as well as far distant mighty Mt. Rainier, the Cascade Mountain range, Mt. Baker, the Olympic Mountains. It also gives a bird’s eye view of nearby  Bellevue, Mercer Island, Radmond, Elliott Bay and vast expanse of harbor. You can also see little farther Ban Bridge and St. Juan Islands.

Little bit more about Columbia Center. It  was developed by Martin Selig, the 76-story, 1.5 million square foot Center was completed in 1985. Clad in smoked tempered glass and Carnelian granite, the structure boasts 8,800 windows, 2,100 hydronic heat pumps, 48 elevators, and 6 escalators. The many technical innovations required for such a large scale project, such as viscoelastic dampers and triangle shaped bracing, enable Columbia Center to withstand earthquakes and hurricane force winds, making it one of the strongest and safest buildings in the Pacific Northwest Ameica.
The top two levels (75th and 76th) belong to the private Columbia Tower Club, which houses a restaurant, bar, library and meeting rooms.

An underground concourse connects the Columbia Center with the nearby Seattle Municipal Tower and Bank of America Fifth Avenue Plaza. When it was first built this tower was named Columbia Center. The name was later changed to Columbia Seafirst Center, for Seafirst Bank, and then to the Bank of America Tower, when Seafirst was fully integrated into Bank of America. That’s where the tower got it’s nickname  “BOAT” (Bank of America Tower) from. In November 2005 the building’s name was changed back to Columbia Center (TCC), which it is still called today.
Another very interesting fact:

The Columbia Center plays host to the largest firefighter competition in the world. About 1,300 firefighters from around the world make the trek up 69 floors and 1,311 steps wearing their full firefighter gear. Beneficiary of this event is the local chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma society.










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