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, 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.
Main building
Erected in 1893, the four-story building was one of many to be built in the "burnt district" in the years after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. Highly praised at the time of its construction, it was designed by the architectural partnership Skillings and Corner. Used in its early years for a series of wholesale businesses, it was designed to carry loads of 250 pounds per square foot. The National Grocery Company occupied space in the building until moving into the much larger National Building at Western Avenue and Madison Street in 1904, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The original plan called for the use of white sandstone on the ground floor and red brick above, but "white" brick throughout was chosen instead, an unusual choice for the time, and a trendsetting one. It was also unusual for its time in having electric elevators. The building is largely intact, although it is missing part of its original parapet. This was most likely caused by an earthquake in 1949 which damaged many buildings in the Pioneer Square district.
The adjacent Union Trust Annex continues a similar design; the architect is unknown, but it was not Skillings and Corner. The name Union Trust Annex dates only from the 1970s. The use of light brick was, by then, a well-established practice. It was built for Ernest Thurlow, and was intended for his Superior Candy and Cracker Company; the Seattle Cracker and Candy Company was already operating in the adjacent Union Trust Building. Superior Candy and Cracker Company occupied the entire annex building from March 1901 to 1915. Unlike the Union Trust Building, the Union Trust Annex retains all of its original parapet. The Union Trust Annex was the original home of the Seattle Unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, opening in 1979 after several years of work. That move one block south and one block east in 2005 to new quarters in the former Cadillac Hotel.
