The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
With cherry trees in blossom, a large magnolia shedding its petals outside the east entrance to the domed Legislative Building and the 105-day session into its final weeks, it’s clearly spring in Olympia.
But nothing suggests the death and rebirth of the Easter season more than the removal of the old press houses to make room for a new office building for senators and legislative staff.
The slowly shrinking permanent press corps was removed from the century-old structures about a year ago and relocated in the lower level of the Legislative Building. The two press houses – which were, in fact, originally built for residential purposes, not offices – stood empty and forlorn for months while preparations for a $174 million campus modernization project were finalized.
On a recent lunch hour, some of the previous press house denizens were invited back to their former quarters for a chance to say a final farewell by donning hard hats and swinging a sledgehammer to start the deconstruction of one of the buildings.
The whacking of some porch pillars was hugely cathartic, and proved that most of the journalists should not quit their day jobs or attempt work with their hands that involves anything other than typing.
Republican senators and their staff were also moved from the nearby Newhouse Building, a two-story brick box with a leaky roof built in 1934 by the Works Progress Administration as a temporary office building.
Temporary buildings on the Capitol Campus aren’t quite as permanent as a temporary tax, but nearly. The Newhouse Building also is being dismantled, although the name will be resurrected for the new building. Let’s hope no one will call it the New Newhouse.
The press buildings were frame structures, one a Craftsman bungalow named for its earliest owners, the Carlyon family; the other a square duplex named for Elizabeth Ayer, the groundbreaking architect who designed it. After being occupied by reporters, however, they became known as the Blue House and the White House, respectively, the former for its fading exterior color and the latter for John White, a longtime Associated Press correspondent and famously hard-nosed newsman.
The Blue House had a large, L-shaped front porch that was the scene of several end-of-session parties in which legislative interns sometimes had too much to drink and had to be admonished by senior legislative staff to behave. It had a fireplace that was not usable and a chimney that shed a hunk of bricks and mortar that fell through the roof and ceiling, into the Seattle Times office, during the Nisqually Quake.
The exterior paint was fading when I moved into The Spokesman-Review office in the Blue House in late 2009; the state never refreshed it, so the building might have been more appropriately named the Gray House by the end of the next decade.
The building had not a stitch of insulation in the attic, but made up for it in the winter with a radiator that worked overnight to turn the offices into a sauna each morning.
Both buildings were on historic registers, which probably staved off destruction for a time. After the Legislature approved the nine-figure construction project, the state tried to find buyers willing to lift them off their foundations, load them onto a flatbed and move them to a new location. Despite some initial interest, there were no serious offers.
The houses were once filled with dozens of reporters. When they were closed, the full-time press corps numbered seven. It continues to decline, although some of the reporting is being replaced by websites and blogs, many of which don’t require an office on campus. Or any office at all.
At some point, a shiny new four-story building will have risen on the land, and the press houses will be a faint memory.
The new building will have secure doors and energy-efficient windows, plenty of insulation, a variety of rooms for various purposes, an appealing façade on all sides, and (let’s hope) a roof that does not leak.
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