engineering

Lyon Building

Lyon Building is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lyon Building rather than just read about it. In short: The Lyon Building is a historic building located at 607 Third Avenue in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. It was built in 1910 by the Yukon Investment Company and was named after the city of Lyon in France, reflecting the French heritage of the company's owners.

Key takeaways

Lyon Building belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lyon Building to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lyon Building from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Lyon Building is a historic building located at 607 Third Avenue in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. It was built in 1910 by the Yukon Investment Company and was named after the city of Lyon in France, reflecting the French heritage of the company's owners. It was designed by the firm of Graham & Myers in the Chicago school style of architecture and was built by the Stone & Webster engineering firm, whose use of non-union labor would make the yet unfinished building the target of a bombing by notorious union activist James B. McNamara, who would commit the deadly Los Angeles Times bombing only 1 month after. The Lyon Building was luckily not destroyed due to its substantial construction, and after little delay, it was completed in 1911 and soon became one of Seattle's most popular office addresses for lawyers and judges due to its proximity to Seattle's public safety complex and the King County Courthouse. It was the founding location of many foreign consuls, social and political clubs as well as the City University of Seattle. The building's basement now serves as an entrance the Pioneer Square station of the Seattle Transit Tunnel. The Lyon Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 30, 1995 and was designated a Seattle landmark on August 16, 1996. In 1997 it was converted to residential use as a shelter and services center for the homeless and at-risk by the non-profit Downtown Emergency Service Center, who are the current owners of the building.

History

Before the Lyon Building The double lot at the Northwest corner of Third Avenue and James Street was originally the site of the home of Bailey Gatzert (1829-1893), 8th mayor of Seattle (1875–76) and one of the city's leading businessmen in the 19th century as a partner in the Schwabacher Brothers hardware company. Gatzert had his home constructed in 1875 during his term as mayor and it was one of the most elegant houses in the city at the time. The Gatzerts would play host to president Rutherford B. Hayes at the home during his visit to the city in the Fall of 1880. In 1892, following the lead of other wealthy Seattleites, Gatzert and his wife Barbetta purchased an entire block on First Hill with plans to build a new mansion after returning from a vacation to Europe but Gatzert would die on the boat before making it back home in April 1893. That property would eventually be donated to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle who would construct the St. James Cathedral on the site. After Gatzert's passing, his widow moved out of the house and later out of the city all together. Their old home was turned into lodgings and the grounds around it would gradually be filled in with a hodgepodge of small brick buildings, rendering the old house unrecognizable.

The property was purchased from the Gatzert Estate for $70,000 in September 1901 by a syndicate headed by William E. Stevens of the Stevens Hotel Company (which managed the Hotel Seattle, among others), who intended to build a 10-story fireproof hotel on the site. Plans were prepared by Saunders and Lawton with a working title of "The New Hotel Seattle" and elaborate perspective drawings were published in local newspapers, but because of the odd slope of Third Avenue at the site and the city's constant delays in regrading it, the project stalled before the hotel could even get an official name. After having refused several offers, in May 1905 W.E. Stevens' syndicate sold the property to capitalist Raymond Auzias de Turenne, then the French Vice-consul at Dawson, YT for $150,000. Turenne soon formed the Yukon Investment Company that would be in charge of developing new buildings and properties around the city. Due to continuing uncertainty about the regrading and widening of Third Avenue, the Third and James property remained unimproved and the increasingly ramshackle corner was beginning to be seen as a public nuisance and a fire trap.

"We had planned a skyscraper for this corner costing $400,000 or more but we will not build until we know what move the city of Seattle will make next. When we improved this property 16 months ago the city officials informed us that the street line would remain as it then was. Since then the city has widened the street and we are now tearing down the work constructed less than two years ago." - R. Auzias Turenne, June 1908

The Lyon Building In February 1910 during a whirlwind of new construction in the city, the Yukon Investment Company announced that they were finally ready to build; proposing a substantial $500,000 building on the site. They commissioned architects Graham & Myers to design a 6-story reinforced concrete office building clad in brick and terracotta, which would be shorter than the previous buildings planned there. The resulting design was a mixture of Chicago school and Beaux-arts styles. A special feature of the building would be an interior court as wide as Third Avenue. Turenne named the building after Lyon, France in honor of the French heritage he and many others involved in his investment company shared. The contract for construction was soon awarded to the nationally renowned Stone & Webster engineering corporation who were known as an "open shop" firm, meaning they used non-union labor on all their jobs; a point of contention amongst national labor unions that would make them a target of union activists. Demolition of the old Gatzert House and the warren of surrounding shops began in March and the building was begun the following month.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lyon Building

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lyon Building claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lyon Building before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lyon Building ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lyon Building

In research: Lyon Building appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lyon Building in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lyon Building is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1910 establishments in Washington (state), 1910s architecture in the United States, Buildings and structures completed in 1910, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lyon Building outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lyon Building in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lyon Building means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lyon Building out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lyon Building in simple terms?

Why does Lyon Building matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lyon Building?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lyon Building.