Gracemont Alumni Hall at The Bush School – 2024 Outstanding Stewardship Award

• September 12, 2024
• No Comment
• Awards

Historic Seattle’s Annual Preservation Celebration is coming up on September 19, 2024. We’ll celebrate the projects and people that help amplify our mission. Today, we feature the Gracemont Alumni Hall at The Bush School, the second 2024 Outstanding Stewardship Award recipient. 

Congratulations Gracemont Alumni Hall and The Bush School!

From its humble beginnings in 1924 with six students attending preschool and kindergarten in the living room of founder Helen Taylor Bush’s house in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood (133 Dorffel Drive, extant), to The Bush School of today, with more than 700 students in grades K-12, the educational institution has stood witness to Seattle history.

Gracemont Alumni Hall, circa 1915, was purchased by The Bush School in 1944. Originally a residence, the building was used as a boarding house for seventh through tenth graders and as classrooms for preschoolers. Today the iconic building houses administrative offices and classrooms and strategically thought-out spaces for students to study and gather across 12,000 square feet on four levels. The recently completed renovation and seismic retrofit of Gracemont Alumni Hall demonstrates The Bush School’s commitment to preserving history through stewardship of the historic building so closely tied to the school’s heritage.

The main goal of the project was to preserve as many of the historic materials and details as possible while integrating life-safety, accessibility, and energy performance upgrades for contemporary times while providing more space for a growing community.

The project team restored beautiful exterior masonry, ornate plastered ceilings and walls, and historic woodwork throughout the building. New modern mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire sprinkler systems, in conjunction with energy upgrades to the exterior envelope, ensure occupant comfort and energy efficiency. And critical safety elements added to the building’s structure create a safe building at the center of the upper campus.

While the new skylight-lit atrium and beautifully restored and preserved finishes steal the show visually, the new structural system within the building stands out as a masterpiece of planning, coordination, ingenuity, and execution. Getting the complex steel and diaphragm connections needed for seismic retrofitting into the building with minimal disruption to the existing historic structure of the building turns out to have been a challenge worth taking.

The Bush School chose its project team well, knowing that extensive experience with historic structures would be key to a successful project, one that melded rehabilitation best practices with an eye toward making much needed upgrades and improvements to carry the historic building through the next 100 years.

Congratulations to The Bush School and its project team members SHKS Architects, the Rafn Company, Degenkolb Engineers, PAE Engineers, LUMA Lighting Design, 4EA Building Science, Stantec, Cite Specific, and Bloom Projects, LLC

Image courtesy of Bloom Projects, LLC

Tolliver Temple Church of God in Christ – 2024 Community Advocacy Award

• September 10, 2024
• No Comment
• Awards

Historic Seattle’s Annual Preservation Celebration is coming up on September 19, 2024. We’ll celebrate the projects and people that help amplify our mission. Today, we feature Tolliver Temple Church of God in Christ, the 2024 Community Advocacy Award recipient. 

Congratulations Tolliver Temple!

The Community Advocacy Award goes to Tolliver Temple Church of God in Christ for its proactive effort to seek landmark protection for its historic building, ensuring that a piece of Central District history lives on in a community that continues to experience considerable change, both culturally and physically.

In 2023, the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board voted unanimously to designate the Tolliver Temple Church of God in Christ as a landmark under all six criteria. Only a handful of Seattle landmarks have achieved this remarkable honor (Pacific Science Center, Mt. Zion Baptist Church, and the Space Needle are a few examples).

Located at 1915 E. Fir St., the historic building conveys layers of history connected to its neighborhood. Originally the Sephardic Bikur Holim synagogue erected by Turkish-Sephardic Jewish immigrants in 1929 for religious, educational, social, and cultural purposes, “it is one of the few clearly visible vestiges of Jewish life left in the Central District. Since 1963, it has served as the home of Tolliver Temple Church of God in Christ, a predominately African-American congregation with roots in the Great Migration of the early 20th century. Collectively, the building reflects the stories of two independent Seattle communities that originated in the Central District and illustrates how multiple narratives can resonate from a single place.” (Seattle Landmark Nomination Report)

The road to landmark designation isn’t always easy, especially when it involves property owned by a religious entity. The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Ordinance allows any person to submit a nomination application. Owner consent is not required with one exception—properties owned by a religious entity require owner consent for nomination or an owner may voluntarily submit its own nomination application. This exception is due to State Supreme Court rulings based on the First Amendment.

The landmark nomination application for Tolliver Temple was voluntarily submitted by church leaders, members, and friends with the support and assistance of friends and members of Sephardic Bikur Holim. Contributors to the nomination effort include Edith Harrison, current church member and leader of the effort among church members on behalf of Pastor Emeritus O.J. Jenkins and alongside current Pastor Kenny Isabell and Bishop Alvin Moore; former member Rose Wallace-Croone; and members and friends of Sephardic Bikur Holim who contributed to the compilation of the nomination report—Jamie Merriman-Cohen, Stuart Eskenazi, Al Maimon, and Lilly De Jaen. Cultural resources consultant Sarah Martin prepared parts of the nomination and shepherded it through the process.

Congratulations to all.

Image courtesy of Eugenia Woo