United Shopping Tower

Seattle, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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The Olympic Tower, originally known as the United Shopping Tower, is a 12-story Art Deco office tower completed in 1929 at the southwest corner of Third Avenue and Pine Street in Seattle, Washington. Designed by Henry Bittman for the United Pacific Corporation, the building features a distinctive composition of a three-story retail base supporting a ten-story tower of reinforced concrete and terra cotta, setback from Third Avenue but flush with Pine Street. Its facade is characterized by an exceptional proportion of large windows—reported at construction to exceed that of any other Seattle building at the time—providing natural light throughout the interiors. Built as an early prototype of a vertical shopping center with one retail tenant per floor and a tea room on the tenth story, the innovative concept ultimately failed following the Great Depression's onset, prompting conversion to office use by 1932. The building later served as headquarters for Olympic Savings Bank and today remains an important example of Seattle's early modernist commercial architecture, designated a City of Seattle Landmark in 1987 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.