Seattle | The Best Travel Destinations

Seattle Public Library – USA

Seattle Public Library – USA

photo by Bobak Ha’Eri

The Seattle Public Library (SPL) is the public library system serving Seattle, Washington, USA. It was officially established by the city in 1890, though there had been efforts to start a Seattle library as early as 1868. There are 26 branches in the system, most of them named after the neighborhoods in which they are located. Also included are Mobile Services and the Central Library (opened 2004, designed by Rem Koolhaas). The Seattle Public Library also founded, and until July 2008 administered, the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL).

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Space Needle – Seattle

Space Needle History – Seattle

The story starts on a napkin

In 1959, an unlikely artist inspired by the Stuttgart Tower in Germany was sketching his vision of a dominant central structure for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair on a placemat in a coffee house.

The artist was Edward E. Carlson, then president of Western International Hotels. His space-age image was to be the focus of the futuristic World’s Fair in Seattle, whose theme would be Century 21. Carlson penciled the shape that would become the internationally known symbol for Seattle, the Space Needle.

However, Carlson and his supporters soon found moving the symbol from the placemat to the drawing board to the construction phase was not an easy process. The first obstacle was the structure’s design. Carlson’s initial sketch underwent many transformations. One drawing resembled a tethered balloon and another was a balloon-shaped top house on a central column anchored by cables. Architect John Graham, fresh from his success in designing the world’s first shopping mall (Seattle’s Northgate), turned the balloon design into a flying saucer. A dozen architects on Graham’s team worked on sketches and ideas before a final compromise was reached just a year and a half before the fair was to open.

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