Culture
Seattle Wants to Save a Beloved Music Venue. But Is It Too Late?
The Showbox has become a flashpoint in the fight to preserve a changing city.
In 2007, a team of Seattle consultants assessed the historical significance of dozens of buildings in the city’s urban core. Some were deemed meaningful enough that they were nominated as local landmarks. Others weren’t so lucky.
One building in the latter category was the Showbox, a downtown music venue that opened in 1939. Although its walls were virtually dripping with rare memories from nearly every musical genre since the Jazz Age, its physical structure had been altered multiple times. As a result, the consultants deemed that the space wasn’t qualified to be a historic site.