Walking Seattle Center--Art is Everywhere!
On our first day of two in Seattle, we walked for miles and discovered art everywhere we went, proving one doesn't need to go to an art museum to see art!
We arrived in Seattle early on Monday morning and had the next day and a half to explore.
We had initially reserved a four-hour, Regent-choice excursion, SPACE NEEDLE & CHIHULY GARDEN OF GLASS, at the non-discounted price of $94.00 per person. The highlights included:
Enjoy the ultimate view of Seattle and beyond from the soaring Space Needle.
Look straight down 500 feet through the Space Needle’s rotating glass floor.
Be awed by the whimsical, visually stunning glass art in Chihuly Garden and Glass.
After some research, we realized the Space Needle and Chihuly were within walking distance of our cruise port terminal at Pier 66. We returned our tickets and began planning a day and a half of DIY touring.
We had already decided to take some of our more challenging-to-pack art, porcelain, and ceramics to a FedEx office for shipping home, and the nearest location was just blocks away from Chihuly and the Space Needle.
We splurged on an Uber and took care of our shipping business first. Then, we walked through the urban park, admiring the International Fountain. The International Fountain was originally installed by Kenichi Nakano & Associates in 1961 for the World’s Fair and was rebuilt in 1995 to make it more accessible to the public.
We then took a peek inside the Armory Building, now a multi-use community facility—its Art Deco exterior was simply too inviting to resist. Were there Art Deco features inside as well, we wondered?
There were lots of Art Deco features inside! The building's Art Deco design is easily recognized and is characterized by the unique styling that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. It featured numerous geometric shapes, curves, stylized sculptures, bold colors, and materials like stainless steel, granite, and chrome.
The Seattle Field Artillery Armory was originally built in 1939, and as the Armory, it housed the 146th Field Artillery and its half-ton tanks. Imagine all those tanks in this vast space! For the 1962 World’s Fair, the Armory was transformed into the first vertical shopping mall in the nation.
There is an art walk that features art near the Seattle Place, including inside the Armory Building. Queue VI, by William Sildar, is a laminated wood sculpture located in the north entrance lobby and depicts a variety of abstract human-like forms. Since we’ve stood in many a queue over the last almost 5 months on our World Cruise, this seemed an apt piece of artwork to admire.
Artist Ronnie Hawkins created this mural over a 6 year period, combining all of the elements of Seattle that he loved. Seattle’s Picture is his reminder of what a spectacular place Seattle is.
The China Mural is a series of ceramic wall hangings that were made by Seattle-area elementary and high school students..
Sherpa and I have been to the top of the Space Needle, but it was six years ago and we wanted to see the view again. So we went up in the Space Needle. While waiting in line, we looked down into the gift shop and were amused to see the same LEGO tower we’d admired in 2019.
Built for the 1962 World’s Fair to symbolize Space Age aspirations, the saucer-shaped Space Needle soars 500 feet above the city. We loved the whole experience.
The observation tower has sweeping views of urban Seattle, Mount Rainier, Puget Sound and the Cascades and Olympic mountain ranges. On a clear day, it really does feel like you can see forever!
There’s our little ship, The Seven Seas Mariner, our home away from home for the last 143 days. Only seven more days until we bid her adieu.
You can look straight down to the ground while standing on the rotating glass floor. The shadow of the Space Needle is my favorite part.
We could see the top of this art installation. Sonic Bloom is a bunch of 40 foot-tall, interactive solar-powered flowers and the creation of artist Dan Corson. The flowers react to movement by “singing” and glow at night using stored solar energy. Once again, look at those crazy shadows!
Look at the Chihuly Gardens from above. What seems incredibly immense when viewed up close looks quite inconsequential from 500 feet in the air.
Daddy Long Legs can only be seen when looking down from the Space Needle Observation Deck. It’s on the roof of the Armory! Daddy Long Legs is an optical illusion painting by Marlin Peterson, painted in 2012 and repainted in 2023.
And what goes up must come down. The Space Needle’s elevator is speedy. The elevators travel at a speed of 800 feet/minute or about 10 mph and it takes 43 seconds to reach the observation deck. Smooth and comfortable.
When we’d had enough high altitude cityscape viewing, we stopped at the Chihuly Bar and Grill, conveniently located next to Chihuly Gardens and in the shadow of the Space Needle. We ordered Wagyu beef sliders and fries, both delicious and well worth the calories. I ordered a cherry coke which came with extra sweet cherries on the side and Sherpa ordered his standard beverage, a destination beer called Hazy Session IPA, brewed by Dru Bru Brewing in Seattle.
Sherpa’s Take: Dru Bru Hazy Session IPA. 5.1% ABV. “The color, as expected, is a cloudy, hazy gold. The initial taste is crisp and punchy, with a pleasant balance of hops and malt. The aftertaste is dominated by hops, and the bitterness increases. Enjoyable balance and complex flavor. 7/10. It pairs well with Wagyu beef sliders and fries.”
After lunch, we wandered through the Artists at Play Playground, a creative mix of children’s activities, playground equipment, poetry, and art. From our perch near the xylophone, we could see the eye-catching colors of Grass Blades. The 145-foot long art screen wall is made up of 110 thirty-foot tall steel blades.
Water's Edge, Year's Round was commissioned and installed by Chihuly Garden and Glass and is located at the base of the Space Needle. Real branches and tree stumps were used to create bronze molds for this testament to the Pacific Northwest landscape.
Walking Round Thing by Harold Balazs, 1980, copper. As the name suggests, Harold Balazs asks viewers to walk around and enjoy this sculpture from all sorts of perspective.
Oh look! A bird! If you’ve been following our 150-day World Cruise, you may remember I started this Substack with a few goals: to visit hundreds of places, see lots of art, document Sherpa’s destination beers, and share photos of birds I add to my life list. That last one has been the hardest and most elusive. I’ve managed to see at least one bird each day, and submit a daily checklist to eBird, but capturing sharp photographs has proven complicated. Photographing birds takes time and quiet, and we don’t have much quiet time to wait for them.
But as we walked across one of the expansive lawns of Seattle Center, this pretty gull posed for us. “The Glaucous-winged Gull is a large, stocky gull of the North Pacific. Generally fairly pale and uniform-looking; at all ages, note wingtips and back are approximately the same color. Takes four years for immatures to progress from mostly brown to fully white and gray adult plumage.” — from eBird.
On our walk back to the pier, we walked around and through this massive red sculpture by Alexander Liberman. Olympic Iliad is a monumental construction of 41 steel cylinders, cut at varying angles and lengths and piled on top of each other. It was created for the 1962 World’s Fair (as were many of structures and art installations in the area.)
(After our Space Needle visit, we did tour Chihuly Glass and Gardens, but since I took several hundred photos of the glass art in this amazing museum, I plan to devote an entire post to Chihuly.)
I think I would’ve been scared to go up in the Space Needle So I am grateful for your photographs! Seems like a beautiful start to the day! Seattle is somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit, so it’s been fun to see all of your stops.