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Like a Mariners-free post-season and pumpkin spice premium gasoline, historic preservation is in the air this autumn all around Puget Sound. Here are updates on three efforts and ways to get involved with saving at least two of them.

Guild 45th Theatre in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood

The old 1920-1921 Guild 45th Theatre is no more, following several days of demolition work in the past week. The more recent part of the theatre complex, built in the 1970s, was torn down last year, along with an old residence that had housed various restaurants and bars over the past several decades.

The original 1920 auditorium, which had been modified extensively over the decades, was the focus of the most recent demolition efforts, and most of that work was completed as of this past Monday. The building was denied landmark status by Seattle’s Landmark Preservation Board in 2016 because, at least in part, of those extensive modifications.

Both auditoriums closed in June 2017, as did the Seven Gables Theatre on Roosevelt Way in the University District. The Seven Gables was destroyed in a . Both the Guild and the Seven Gables were operated by Landmark Cinemas, a national company that still operates the Crest Theatre in Shoreline.

There are currently no permit applications to replace what was just torn down, but there are plans in the works for the property next door where that more recent auditorium was demolished last year. The City of Seattle says an application has been submitted for a five-story building with 70 units of housing.

Ryan House in Sumner

As 成人X站 Newsradio reported last week, the City of Sumner reversed long-standing plans to restore a 19th-century dwelling it owns in downtown Sumner: the Ryan House on Main Street, parts of which date to the 1870s or maybe even the 1860s and which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Sumner City Council voted last month to tear it down because, they say, it requires more work and greater expense than originally thought.

A has formed in the past few days and has aligned with the non-profit Sumner Historical Society, the museum and heritage group that had occupied the house for more than 40 years. Before that, the Ryan House had served as Sumner鈥檚 public library for half a century.

Tuesday night, nearly 20 members of the citizens’ group, who call themselves “Friends of Ryan House,” gathered on the porch of the home.

Melody Adams-Forsstr枚m, one of the organizers, told 成人X站 Newsradio they are not wasting any time as they ramp up to fight what sounds like an all-out battle against the Sumner City Council.

“We have to sue them,” Adams-Forsstr枚m said, adding that her group doesn鈥檛 necessarily trust the Sumner City Council, even if that body does somehow agree to delay the planned demolition.

Even with a promise, Adams-Forsstr枚m said, 鈥淵ou have nothing to back it up legally, you have to go to court and get a summary judgment or an order from the judge.鈥�

“They need it from the court, from a judge, that legally says” to halt demolition plans, Adams-Forsstr枚m said. And that demolition may already be scheduled to take place on November 2, Adams-Forsstr枚m said.

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成人X站 Newsradio reached City of Sumner spokesperson Carmen Palmer Wednesday morning to confirm what Adams-Forsstr枚m said. Palmer said that no demolition date for the Ryan House has been set.

“The only date we have so far is October 18, 8 a.m.-noon when heirs of Lucy V. Ryan can enter to take any item of the house they’d like per the deed,” Palmer wrote. “We are getting the notices out for that today.”

“There’s a full, proper process to follow,” Palmer continued, referring to the city’s plans to demolish the Ryan House. “We filed the SEPA checklist yesterday. After that, there’s the issuance of the (demolition) permit. Then, we go put out the request for bids from (demolition) companies.”

The checklist is a required step prior to construction or demolition projects which is mandated by state law.

Also at the meeting on the porch of the Ryan House Tuesday night was Dale Loseth, president of the Sumner Historical Society.

Is an impromptu historic preservation campaign consistent with his group’s mission?

“Oh, absolutely,” Loseth told 成人X站 Newsradio. “Because this house is Sumner’s history. It’s been the repository for Sumner’s history for 51 years. Even when it was a library, the librarians carried a lot of historical items and did displays and did events.”

The house was built in multiple phases beginning in the 1860s, Loseth says. The Ryans are one of Sumner’s earliest settler families, and it was Lucy Ryan who donated the home to the city in 1926.

Seattle High School Memorial Stadium

Seattle High School Memorial Stadium at Seattle Center will, Wednesday afternoon, be considered for landmark status by the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board.

As 成人X站 Newsradio previously reported, Memorial Stadium was discussed at an earlier meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Board in August, when board members voted 8-1 to consider the entire 1947 structure 鈥� and not just the 1951 wall of names of Seattle Public Schools鈥� World War II dead 鈥� for landmark designation.

The process is clumsy, to say the least. The Seattle School District owns Memorial Stadium and has made it clear they want to tear it down. They paid a consultant to prepare what many preservation advocates would describe as an “anti-nomination” 鈥� or a document whose goal is the stadium NOT being designated a landmark.

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Whether this is true or not, the landmark nomination for Memorial Stadium, which was submitted in June, is missing a stunning amount of basic historical information about Memorial Stadium. At their meeting in August, board members asked the consultants who prepared the nomination to address these deficits, particularly in the areas of concerts held at Memorial Stadium, as well as other public gatherings.

When the board meets Wednesday to consider the “anti-nomination,” there will be no one person officially advocating on Memorial Stadium鈥檚 behalf and encouraging the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board to designate the structure as a city landmark. As one preservation professional (who requested anonymity) said in August, the process is akin to a defense attorney advocating for their client鈥檚 execution.

Members of the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board are volunteers, and they often look to the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods Landmarks Board staff for direction on how they might vote on these landmark designations. The staff provides this direction in the form of a staff report.

For Memorial Stadium, which is already targeted for removal and replacement as part of a public-private partnership, it’s perhaps political or other subtle pressure that led to a staff report that reads like a kind of policy contortionism.

“The Landmarks Board Coordinator acknowledges the cultural history associated with this site, as a gathering space for community events prior to development, then as Civic Field, then as Memorial Stadium,” the staff report reads. “The coordinator believes the significance of this place may not be embodied in the 1947 stadium structure itself, but rather in the open, outdoor playfield area.”

Suggesting that the significance of Memorial Stadium is not in the structure but only in the field is a kind of bizarre hair-splitting, which also conveniently gives the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board a means of not standing in the way of the City of Seattle and Seattle Public Schools’ plan to replace the stadium.

However, extending this analysis to other potential landmarks the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board may one day have to weigh in on, one might be able to say that only the screen of a movie theatre is historically significant, and only the stage of a music venue is historically significant, or only the kitchen of a restaurant is historically significant.

It’s as if those community members gathered to take part in the game, movie, concert or meal are immaterial to the historical significance. That鈥檚 just plain bizarre and doesn鈥檛 make any logical sense.

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The other thought is that in some future landmark designation process, the owner of a theater, a restaurant or a music venue who is opposed to landmark designation could just tell the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board “the significance of this place may not be embodied in the structure itself, but rather in the spaces inside. So it’s not a landmark. And so I’ll tear down the old non-landmark building and maintain those significant ‘spaces inside’ when I build a new thing in the exact same spot.”

This might set a dangerous precedent for any structure that comes before the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board for possible landmark designation.

The staff report also suggests the option of designating the 1951 wall of names as a landmark. That would miss the point of the 1947 structure, which was built as the memorial to Seattle Public Schools’ alums who died in World War II. The conflict had just ended, and many relatives of those dead former students likely gathered in those 1947 grandstands to remember their loved ones. Those grandstands and other elements of Memorial Stadium are what’s often called a “living memorial.”

The concept of “living memorials” was popular after World War II when civic leaders decided that rather than build statues of soldiers to occasionally gaze upon and genuflect, it was better to build things like stadiums where people could freely and voluntarily gather and celebrate and cheer, freely express themselves however they saw fit, and even sometimes mourn.

Many people in the Seattle area can still remember that Memorial Stadium played host to a public gathering of 10,000 people in April 1968 after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. That memorable gathering of those people in those 1947 grandstands was not mentioned in the school district’s landmark nomination for Memorial Stadium, by the way.

It could be argued this freedom to gather together as community members in those 1947 grandstands for sports, for music, and even for memorial services is exactly what those nearly 800 Seattle Public Schools alums were fighting for when they made the ultimate sacrifice in World War II. And, the case could be made for giving Memorial Stadium the “Climate Pledge Arena treatment,” to preserve the original structure, and create a newly imagined state-of-the-art gathering place in and around that should-be-considered-sacred 1947 stadium.

And if Seattle High School Memorial Stadium doesn’t qualify as a landmark 鈥� the fully functioning, structurally sound living, breathing and tangible symbol of this city’s promise to always remember and honor that sacrifice 鈥� no structure does.

If you go …

The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board will meet聽 Wednesday, Oct. 4, (today) at 3:30 p.m. at Seattle City Hall and online. For more information about attending and about making public comments, click for a PDF of the agenda.

You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien, read more from him鈥�here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast聽here. If you have a story idea, please email Feliks鈥�here.