Is it time for Seattle to finally exorcise the ghost of Emmett Watson? Some architects think so. The late, beloved Seattle newspaper columnist was not an architectural critic. His spirit would no doubt be bemused at being dragged into arcane zoning-code debates about design review and the “ugly townhouse” problem.
But Watson was a champion of “Lesser Seattle.” He was a spokesman and symbol for a smaller, quieter, working-class city when families could, on a union wage, afford a bungalow home on a single lot with a union wage.
The piece goes on to detail the horrors of bad town houses, like those with dominant driveways and standoffish fences—the result of bad zoning regulations that city council’s land-use committee is currently revising—but those problems can be remedied. New rules could promote approachable row houses, little apartment buildings, and backyard cottages. But that still won’t assuage the droves of persnickety denizens those who feel menaced by density—no matter how well planned it is. The article asks:
More people, more households, high prices — and the same amount of land. What’s a Lesser Seattleite to do?
Um, can we exorcise those people, too?
Emmett Watson? Most Slog reader aren’t old enough to remember him and the rest aren’t from Seattle.
We’ll need to create a new spokesperson for a simpler Seattle.
no need to create. Just go get Clark Humphrey.
If you want to live in a small town, feel free to move to a small town. Bellingham is really nice this time of year.
You might have once lived a small city, but that’s changed. Get over it. Did you know that the Bronx was once farmland? Crazy, I know.
I don’t think Emmit Watson was necessarily anti-density. Certainly not in the way Knute Berger seems to be. He has perverted Watson’s earnest, if curmudgeonly, ideals.
The thing that really gets my goat about these anti-townhouse boobs is that they are FACTUALLY WRONG.
In reality, crappy buildings have been going up all over town for FORTY YEARS or more. There are crappy nineties apartments, crappy eighties apartments, crappy seventies apartments, and even a few crappy sixties apartments hanging on ALL OVER THE FREAKING PLACE.
The thing is, you don’t see them — your mind filters them out because you’ve seen them so many times before. You do notice the faux-Craftsman four-packs and whatnot because they’re NEW, so you haven’t gotten used to them. Yet. You will. And if you keep up your idiotic rants against them, you Knute Bergers, you’re going to look especially foolish in a few years, when people look at you and say “huh, I never noticed those, which ones do you mean?”
Seriously. Drive up Greenwood Avenue north of 90th sometime, or the blocks behind Market Street in Ballard. South Park, Wallingford, Capitol Hill, Rainier Beach — shitty apartments and condos everywhere, if you take the time to look for them.
It’s just not a big deal.
As for the “same amount of land” morons, someone needs to explain to them that it’s not 1970 anymore. They sound like the twatwaffles who complain that candy bars don’t cost five cents anymore. Seattle is expensive BECAUSE IT’S DESIREABLE — and one of the big factors driving prices up is the low density, which reduces the number of people who can live in the center where they want to be. Single-family home bigots are CAUSING THE PROBLEM.
Arrggh.
I don’t understand why people will live in a dynamic, successful city and then complain about the very things that make that city dynamic. Great cities are in a constant state of flux. Change is the only constant. Why can’t they grasp that?
Listen, if you want to live in a city where things don’t change that often, come to Spokane. We bought our single-family, creaky Victorian with lots of garden space for $113,000. Yay, us. The downside? It’s in fucking SPOKANE.
Fnarf, crappy buildings are even older than that. You’re familiar with the WW2 era tilt-up houses on and around UW campus, right? Most of them are barely hanging on, but the UW is using them for graduate offices and whatnot. The Guthrie annexes? Those offices just north of Campus Parkway? Fleapits kept going with paint, plywood, and tape.
Fnarf,
I kinda agree with you on the not-a-big-dealness of the townhouses. But there is something unique in their shittiness. A shitty 70’s apartment building looks like an apartment building and doesn’t pretend to be something else. It’s not an imitation of a suburban house. That makes it an order of magnitude less shitty than one of those townhouses. Every one of those things is a monument to people moving to Seattle, yet not wanting to really live in the city. They all say “look here’s a starter home that you can sell when you move up to a mcMansion in some subdivision and leave this city life that you temporarily condescended to”.
Those things are an aesthetic abomination and a personal insult to everyone who calls the city home.
For the record, I’m against any kind of zoning and believe people have the right to build aesthetic abominations at their own risk and expense. Zoning is what made the suburbs the way they are, not the free market. If people aren’t allowed to build ugly shit, they can’t build good shit. Imagine if independent films had to pass a design review committee of family valuers, centrists and a representative sample of the community.
Seattle townhouse are crappy because of garages. That’s it. If there wasn’t a parking requirement, there could be a better design for inner city space. East coast people know this. When I was in DC I was marveling at the brownstones appeal. They looked good because not one had a garage facing the street.
And that’s the rub- in order to have good development, you need to invest in a good mass transit system, and fast. We should be working on connecting Madison Valley, Ballard and West Seattle to downtown right now so people have an option to live in the city without focusing on the areas surrounding downtown.
You and Bill might double-check history: Emmett liked density – he lived in downtown and Alki apartments most his late life – and his Lesser Seattle campaign (a joke) was to Keep the Bastards Out; he was pro growth but didn’t want, in particular, those interloping Californicators to have anything to do with it. It was a column thing inspired by Oregon Gov. Tom McCall’s message to tourists: Come visit, but please don’t stay.
For those who never actually were in Seattle before the mid-90’s, let me remind you what a complete and utter shit hole this place was throughout the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s.
Go to www. cysewski. web / seattleweb minus the spaces and click on any of the neighborhood photo links. I lived here then, and can testify that Seattle was a crumbling provincial disgusting backwater. If you want to return to those times, pick up and move to Detroit. If you did not move here until the mid-90’s or later, but constantly complain about how cool the old Seattle was, please go and shut the fuck up. If you don’t want to, I would love to shove a knuckle sandwich down your throat.
“…families could, on a union wage, afford a bungalow home on a single lot with a union wage.”
So you are telling me they could do this on a union wage?
Sheesh. Hey, Seattle Times, I hear there are a few copyeditors looking for work. Hire some.