First United Methodist Church

First United Methodist Church

Due to press coverage in the Seattle Times and Seattle Post Intelligencer, Seattle has known that First United Methodist Church is moving ahead with plans to develop its downtown site since May of 2002. As of spring of 2003, development plans involve demolishing the 1907 building. For the last two decades, the fate of the church was under consideration, and some ideas about new development were publicized in the local press as early as 1978. As long ago as 1944, University of Washington sociologist Calvin Schmid pointed to First Methodist as an example of a trend downtown. Churches, single family houses, and affordable housing were subject to the same economic pressure to move out of the business district where land costs were higher than in the city's neighborhoods.

What is happening now is consistent with the church's history, even predating the construction of the now-endangered 1907 sanctuary. First Methodist Church descends from the first church in downtown Seattle, built in 1855. Then known as First Methodist Episcopal, or "White Church," the wood frame building was small and simple, and very similar to churches built throughout the country in the early and mid-nineteenth century. The congregation quickly grew, sold their building in 1887, and moved to a new location at 3rd and Marion. Their new building was much more elaborate than the first, and built in High Victorian Gothic style. This building was demolished as a part of the city's extensive regrades, and the congregation moved slightly uphill to 5th and Marion in 1910, when the existing church was completed.

First United Methodist Church. Photo: Marissa Natkin

The church wishes to continue its homeless ministry, and is currently too small to support the upgrades necessary to keep the current historic building operable. The building suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage during the 2001 Nisqually Earthquake. According to the church, the building does not serve its needs. It seeks a new building that will help the church continue its mission, and insure its financial security into the future.

Historic Seattle is now developing a feasibility study of the adaptive reuse of the historic church building in hopes of finding a developer interested in preserving the building within a new development on the half block site. The church's current plans involve demolishing the 1907 church and replacing it with a smaller church and 37-story office building.