Old Forestry Building with water tower in the background, University of Washington, between 1909 and 1931

• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 1909
• Subjects: Log Cabin; Pacific; Saunders; Yukon; Alaska
• Online Access: http://cdm16786.contentdm.oclc.org:80/cdm/ref/collection/uwcampus/id/37272

Filed in: UW - Buildings - Forestry Building The Forestry Building was built for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909. It was sponsored by the State of Washington and was intended to showcase the state's forest resources. Architects Charles Saunders and George Lawton created a building that echoed the European style of Howard's buildings but which also incorporated the log-cabin idiom of early pioneer buildings. Featuring enormous unprocessed logs felled in Chehalis (now Gray's Harbor) County, the Forestry Building's grand colonnade and soaring interior spaces evoked the majesty of Washington's seemingly limitless forests and, not coincidentally, implied the great potential wealth they contained. An article in the Seattle Times called it “Nature's storehouse, which is more striking than anything man could devise as a display of the Northwest's greatest division of natural wealth.” Located on the site of the present-day Husky Union Building, it served for a time as a forest and botanical museum and also housed the Burke Museum, then known as the Washington State Museum. By 1931, however, insects and the elements had taken their toll and the building was demolished.