Let’s remember when Everett Station opened, on this day in 2002 (February 4)
Yesterday, we talked about how the interstate highway between Everett and Seattle was completed. Today marks another milestone in Everett to Seattle transportation, and it’s one of my favorite, practical buildings in the Northwest.
I used to live in Everett, so I have a genuine fondness for the Everett Station.
HistoryLink tells us:
On February 4, 2002, a ribbon-cutting ceremony marks the opening of Everett Station, an innovative civic facility that combines a multi-modal transportation center with college classrooms, employment services, community space, and city offices. The award-winning building with a brick and glass exterior, copper roof, four-story lobby, and art-filled interior brightens an industrial area of Everett east of downtown. The station brings bus service from Everett Transit, Snohomish County’s Community Transit, regional Sound Transit, and Greyhound together in one location. Over the next two years, the buses will be joined by Amtrak and Sound Transit trains. The University Center at Everett Station provides the first local four-year college degree programs for Everett and Snohomish County residents.
Part of what I love about the Everett Station is its artwork:
Among Everett Station’s highlights were a three-story glass wall, an atrium featuring soaring arches and a terrazo floor with a design representing Snohomish County waterways, a steel and stained-glass clock standing two stories high, and modern sculpture in the exterior gardens. The station’s most important art was not new. A set of murals by acclaimed Northwest painter Kenneth Callahan (1905–1986) representing the history of logging in Everett were permanently displayed on the upper floors. The Weyerhaeuser murals had been donated to the city in 1974 but remained in storage until Everett Station provided a venue for them.
The station’s first floor, with the great four-story lobby, contained ticket counters and waiting areas for bus and train passengers. Everett Transit’s local buses and Community Transit’s commuter buses began serving Everett Station when it opened on February 4, 2002. Greyhound long-distance service and Sound Transit’s regional bus routes were in place soon thereafter. Train service took a little bit longer. Amtrak, which signed a 20-year lease with the city, was expected to begin serving Everett Station in July, but it was not until November 2002 that the national passenger rail company completed the move from its former Bond Street station near Everett’s waterfront to the new transportation hub. It was another year, following difficult negotiations with Burlington Northern for track usage, before Sound Transit was able to begin its Sounder commuter rail service between Everett Station and Seattle, with one weekday train in each direction. In 2009 Sounder service includes a stop in Edmonds and another in Mukilteo and makes four round trips per weekday.
Read the whole thing here:
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