Smith Tower and Columbia Center

Here are two storied buildings (pun intended). Smith Tower in the foreground was built in 1912 and was for a half century the tallest building west of the Mississippi. The just completed Columbia Center (1986) was in its turn the tallest for a brief period. The developer of the Columbia Center, Martin Selig, is himself a remarkable story. I have always had very cordial and warm contacts with him myself; I can’t speak for the others. He is a flamboyant and colorful figure with more detractors than you can shake a stick at. As a child, he and his family fled the Soviet pogroms and, rather than what reason and common sense would seem to dictate, headed east across the vast trackless wilderness of Siberia to Vladivostok. There they hopped a tramp steamer and landed in Seattle just as the war broke out in Europe. The rest is local history.