Union Trust Building (Seattle)
Seattle office building
The Union Trust Building is a commercial building in Seattle, Washington, United States. Located in the city's Pioneer Square neighborhood, on the corner of Main Street and Occidental Way South (Occidental Mall), it was one of the first rehabilitated buildings in the neighborhood, which is now officially a historic district. In the 1960s, when Pioneer Square was better known as "Skid Road", architect Ralph Anderson purchased the building from investor Sam Israel for $50,000 and set about remodeling it, a project that set a pattern for the next several decades of development in the neighborhood. Anderson also rehabilitated the adjacent Union Trust Annex.
History
Before the Fire
The entire lot now occupied by the Union Trust Building (the 1893 portion) was originally filled by the 3-story Pacific House, one of the larger wood-frame hotels in Pioneer Square. Designed by Boone & Meeker, It was built from late 1883 to early 1884 by soon-to-be territorial governor Watson C. Squire and was operated by Eben A. Thorndyke. By 1885 The hotel went into receivership and all the fixtures were auctioned off. It continued on under new management until the great fire and despite the announcement of plans for a 3-story brick hotel to take its place immediately, the site would remain vacant for the next several years afterwards.
The Union Trust Company
The Union Trust Company was incorporated in October 1892 by a wealthy syndicate consisting of bankers Edward O. Graves and Manson F. Backus, attorney Thomas B. Hardin, King County auditor William R. Forrest and now ex-governor Squire with a capital stock of $500,000. The company's purpose would be to manage and develop Squire's numerous property holdings including various subdivisions, the Squire-Latimer Building at First and Main (where they would locate their offices) and the property where the Pacific House had stood, among many others.
The public source identifies “Union Trust Building (Seattle)” as seattle office building. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Union, Trust and Building.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7886362. Authority coordinates are 47.600, -122.333. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1883, 1884 and 1885.
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This entry incorporates text from “Union Trust Building (Seattle)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.