Let’s remember when Town Hall made its debut, on this day in 1999 (March 17)
This is all very exciting. Town Hall, one of my favorite institutions in Seattle (and where I’ve been a member for several years), opened its doors officially twenty years ago today.
On March 17, 1999, Seattle’s new Town Hall is launched with a free celebration of “Seattle’s Favorite Poems,” hosted by Robert Pinsky (b. 1940), poet laureate of the United States. As a warm-up for the event, The Seattle Times prints several favorite poems in its March 15, 1999, editions. At the Town Hall debut, local luminaries, including Tom Skerritt, Speight Jenkins, Rick Rapport, Hazel Wolf (1898–2000), Mike Lowry (1939–2017), Charles Royer (b. 1939), and third-graders Sophie Posnock and Madeline Boardman, read their favorite poems.
They add, elsewhere:
Town Hall Seattle, a venue for a wide variety of cultural events located at 1119 8th Avenue, started life as the city’s Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist. The congregation was established in July 1909, during the city’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, but it was not until 1916 that the congregants began to construct a church building. The structure was built in two stages and was completed and opened in September 1923. It was designed by architect George Foote Dunham (1876–1949), then of Portland, Oregon. The Roman Revival structure served as a church until 1997, when the congregation sold it to Historic Seattle. A feasibility study for its reuse was conducted, with funding from the King County Arts Commission and the Landmarks and Heritage Commission. David C. Brewster (b. 1939), founding editor of the Seattle Weekly, and others organized a group to purchase the building, and in 1998, Historic Seattle transferred title to the newly formed Town Hall L.L.C. The former church was opened to the public in 1999 as a community cultural center called Town Hall. The spacious building, located on First Hill just east of downtown Seattle, is now (2012) owned and operated by the nonprofit Town Hall Association. After its sale, members of the congregation who had worshiped there joined other Christian Science branch churches in the area.
The building is towards the end of a lengthy (and expensive!) renovation project, but it received landmark status in 2012. But Town Hall deserves our praise for getting prominent and brilliant speakers to come to Seattle, and making them accessible for only $5/event.
You should check them out (if you haven’t done so). The calendar looks great!
For further reading:
