Seattle Tower

Seattle, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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Seattle Tower, originally the Northern Life Tower, is a 27-story Art Deco skyscraper completed in 1928 in downtown Seattle, designed by Abraham H. Albertson. Located at 1218 Third Avenue, it was Seattle's first art deco tower and represents a decisive shift in the city's architectural character toward modernist principles of speed and efficiency. The building's most distinctive feature is its ziggurat-shaped exterior clad in 33 shades of brick arranged in a gradient that lightens from base to top, reportedly inspired by local rock formations. Derived from Eliel Saarinen's influential design for the Chicago Tribune competition, the tower rises one floor higher above sea level than the previously prominent Smith Tower. Originally conceived as a 24-story structure to house the Northern Life Insurance Company at a cost of $1.5 million, it was expanded during construction and once featured over 200 floodlights designed to illuminate the building in a "phantasmagoric display" evoking the aurora borealis. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it remains an emblematic example of early American Art Deco design.