Old Industrial Seattle - SODO

These were taken before I quit my job, when I was still scurrying to and fro around Seattle. I am driving through road construction in the SoDo district of Seattle. (See below for SoDo description)
This industrial part of Seattle used to be fraught with danger by large work trucks. Literally, you would be in the extreme minority when driving through here during the week in a car with only 4 tires. Seattle has changed, the heavy labor industries, grit filled industries are all disappearing, and the old cedar beam constructed workshops and buildings are being converted or torn down. The one on the bottom is my favorite. That building has been sinking or twisting or leaning more and more with each passing year. When you walk in it, the woodwork is amazing. Not that it is fine woodwork in the carpenter sense, but it has timbers so large all I can think of is "we don't even have trees like that anymore anywhere in this state." And we are the Evergreen State. The trees cut down for these buildings were local. The wood is amazing. Sometimes I see it go by on Craigslist, someone has a beam and is parting it out for big bucks. Things change. I know. I also know I am in the minority when I look at a tilting building and get all nostalgic. Looking at an old building to me is like reading a book, or people watching. Look at it closely top to bottom, left to right, and you can see remnants of all it has been through. Cedar gutters? Loft accessible from the outside? Old staircases? Blocked off doors or windows? A prohibition era speakeasy in the basement? Look long enough and it will all appear.
SODO: This neighborhood is competely sitting on fill added to the mudflats of Seattle during the last turn of the century. Another hot spot in Seattle you don't want to be when the earthquake hits.... this area will liquefy, which means shake like jello in a bowl and turn to sloppy sinking sand. I am actually pretty sure that geologists have a better definition for liquefaction, but mine is more food friendly.
The newly named ("newly" means within my old lifetime) SoDo (meaning, cutely, SOuth of DOwntown) ( I don't even want to know how much the acronym folks got paid for that one)
centers around the old Sears building, now the Starbucks headquarters. Another clever acronym in Seattle is the S.L.U.T. (South Lake Union Trolley/Transit) T-shirts were quickly printed up with "Ride the SLUT." That one was quickly changed to SLUS... 'streetcar' instead of 'trolley.' I can't tell you how many times I made our poor transportation historian define trolley vs. streetcar vs. tram vs. train vs. elevated train on and on. Plus add in historic timeline. I can just tell you my former volunteers were amazingly patient.

Images: Top, always construction going on in Seattle dangit... gotta tear something down! Mid: Blue building example of Seattle heavy industry that used to abound in SoDo.

Bottom: Sad sad red building across the street from the Sears building. Trust me, it is cool on the inside. Well, okay. Cool if you are into old tilting things.

Houses, traffic, and progress

Or, an alternate title: Shopping for that discount. Since I now have this old place, I am loathe to update it with current trends in housing fashions. That could be akin to having a post-war box house and turning it into a craftsman. That is not the house's origins, so it can look a bit funky. I am therefore driven to re-use or renew type stores. The ones that get called in to strip a classic home built like a tank so that thin walled condos can be built. Ah, I am showing my opinions. If you are going to call it progress, can you at least construct the new structures as well as the one you tore down?
Back to topic. So going to used house part stores in Seattle, and they charge more than if I bought it new. Which, I don't understand. BUT I found the habitat for humanity store in bremerton, and that has some old, some new, alot of wood and leftover paint and brass fixtures, etc etc for very reasonable prices. I have been back several times. I shall take out the previous owners walmart updates and at least get it back within 30 years of when it was built. I have no issues with updating the things you can't see.... water lines, electrical. plumbing, it is when the whole house is converted into whatever housing trend is suiting middle America at that exact moment that it irks me. You ask : why care? And I am sure I would not if I had not grown up in this area, and seen the drastic changes in housing, landscape and amount of green our city no longer has. That, and the layer of pollution that hangs over our heads. Gee... what do all those trees do? Suck up water so there is less flooding? Suck crap out of the air? What is it that happens when you develop large tracks of farmland way the bum%$# out from the cities where people work? With no infrastructure to handle that amount of traffic? People drive and drive and drive. The asthma level in our city has skyrocketed. No one talks of this, but everyone knows. My doctor told me to move if I wanted my asthmatic daughter to be able to breathe. Good philosophy, and I did, but not everyone has that option.