2018 Downtown Historic Walking Tour
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Description
This is the route of the 2018 walking tour, from July 27, 2018. Follow and enjoy!
1. Brelsford WSU Visitor Center
Fifteen-foot-tall concrete letters reading "WSU" and a steel-plate tower establish the western entrance to the university and serve as highly-visible icons to drivers traveling along State Route 270. Designed by Seattle-based Olson Kundig Architects, visitors will discover a light-filled, modular space that showcases materials developed at the WSU Composite Materials and Engineering Center and interactive displays that celebrate the research accomplishments and entrepreneurial spirit of faculty, students, staff, and alumni. The center's design-build team featured graduates from the WSU School of Design and Construction.
2. War Memorial, Pullman, Washington
The structure is a memorial to the residents of Pullman who died in World War I, World War II, the Korean Conflict, and the Viet Nam War. It is in the shape of an obelisk around twenty feet high. It has three metal plaques attached to the metal obelisk, the first with an eagle and design along each side with the names of nine dead from World War I and 25 from World War II. The second plaque, which is smaller, has the name of one person who died in Korea. The third plaque, of plain design, has the names of four men who died in Viet Nam. The small memorial grounds include a flag pole flying the national flag.
3. State Armory (Washington National Guard Building)
Built in 1938, this three-story concrete and masonry structure provided a training space for local units of the Washington State National Guard, many of which served overseas. The Armory also has served as a center for community activities in Pullman, hosting everything from music performances, comedy acts, athletic events, and yoga. Its austere, stripped-down, symmetrical facade includes an arched, recessed entryway in the manner of a Romanesque church.
4. Pine Street Plaza
This public space is used for public gatherings and is the location of the city Christmas tree every year.
5. Audian Theatre
The Audian Theatre has been part of social fabric of life in Pullman for nearly a century. Built in 1915, this building originally housed Pullman's fifth silent movie house, the Grand Theater. The building was remodeled in 1930, reopening as the Audian Theater in October 1930.
6. Old National Bank Site
The current building is set on the footprint of a single-story structure that was built in ca. 1890 and housed one of the first banks in Pullman in ca. 1910. The fenestration, entries, storefronts, and overall scale haven't changed, though the building has been extensively renovated.
7. Webb Block
This building was constructed in ca. 1895 for Dr. Henry J. Webb following the fire of 1890 and-similar to the Mason and Flatiron buildings in the vicinity-represents the historic brick core of Pullman's established downtown in the late nineteenth century. The Webb Block once housed the offices of the Pullman Herald and was a fixture in the early foundation of Pullman. In the last decades of the twentieth century, the building was rechristened as the Combine Mall, the source of still-visible advertising on the structure's west side.
8. Pullman Flatiron Building
The triangular shape of this 1905 brick building resembles the Flatiron Building in New York City. Pullman's version, a load-bearing masonry structure designed by the local architect William Swain, fans out to meet two street grids overlapping in the city center. The prow of the building, on the southeast comer of Main Street and Grand Avenue, has provided a notable gateway to downtown Pullman for more than a century.
