Interurban Building

Seattle, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

Located at Yesler Way and Occidental Way S in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood, the Interurban Building is a masterwork of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture completed in 1890–1891 for the Seattle National Bank. Designed by John Parkinson in his breakthrough project—before he went on to shape Los Angeles's architectural landscape—the building ranks among the finest examples of this style in the Pacific Northwest and has been celebrated by local architects as one of downtown Seattle's most beautiful structures. After the bank's departure five years later, the building passed through several owners and names: the Pacific Block under New York industrialist Lyman Cornelius Smith from 1899, then the Smith Tower Annex following an extensive interior modernization in 1929. From 1904 to 1928, the former bank lobby served as a ticket office and waiting room for the Puget Sound Electric Railway's Seattle–Tacoma interurban line, a role that inspired its current name after restoration in the late 1970s. A contributing property to the Pioneer Square Historic District, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.