Larry and Lani Johnson have been a part of Seattle preservation since the early 1970s. Both were a part of Seattle's early preservation battles, including the effort to save Old Martha Washington School, Ballard's Firestation 18, First Hill's Firestation 25, and the establishment of the Ballard Avenue Landmark District. Lani's early history in Hawaii is an interesting preservation story unto itself, and has added dimension to her approach as a preservationist in Seattle. This interview was conducted in December of 2003.

HM: So how did you get started as a preservationist?

Lani: I grew up in the town of Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii -- back when it was in the Territory of Hawaii. The town I grew up in was a sugar plantation town. My dad was a pilot, during WWII, was stationed in Hawaii, and grew to love the Islands. After the war, he received a job offer in Lahaina. He and my mom decided to move to Lahaina and were married there.

After WWII, there was a general trend to rid of "old things," and to modernize. This occurred in Hawaii too, even though we were a territory. My father was one of a group of people that thought there were some things that were necessary to save to help preserve the culture, the history, and traditions of the area -- the things that made Hawaii unique and attractive. So he was one of the Founding Board members of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, an organization that worked to save some of the buildings, during the early days of preservation work there.

We're talking late 1950s, early 1960s -- right around the time of statehood in Hawaii . it was a very primitive field at the time, so people learned a lot by mistakes and tried things. I grew up watching this, learning from my parents values, and spending plenty of time myself just on my own hanging around old Hawaiian archaeological sites (they were up in the hills around our house and we just wandered up there).

I worked at the Baldwin House, Carthaginian, and Hale Pa'i museums in Lahaina when I was in high school- was a tour guide there, and I even got to do some research among my other duties. One of the women I worked with was a descendent of old Hawaiian royalty, which was fascinating because I would tell her about what I found in my explorations and she'd tell me more about history and culture, and even old legends about ruins I'd seen.

So it was a blending of seeing many layers of culture in the area and seeing the value of trying to save them; seeing people's fear of statehood and losing "Hawaiianess," if you want to call it that; and seeing people trying to keep the early buildings. Also, there was the heartbreak of seeing a treasure razed . In first grade, I went to the old Kamehameha III school in Lahaina, not the Kamehameha school for Hawaiians; this was a public school. However the building had been commissioned by King Kalakaua and it was the crown jewel of the old schools in Hawaii, a truly wonderful building. We'd sit in the room with high, high windows and we'd look out over the harbor, and breezes would come in from the sea. Beautiful fir wainscot and fir floors.

But they decided it was a "firetrap," and they tore it down, and put up this ugly concrete block, single story structure. The nightmare of seeing such a loss, along with the positive things, from then on it made me feel that preservation was of great value. Of course, I was also interested in architecture, and that evolved very early, since I grew up with the notion that before you build something you should think about whether you are going to leave something there that is better than it already is. Just because something is old doesn't mean it's wonderful or worthy of preservation, but you must ask first.

HM: So how and when did you two get together?

Lani: Larry and I met in architecture school.

Larry:I started out in architecture, but got my undergraduate degree in Urban Planning. My interest in preservation began in Ballard, that's when Lani and I met, or maybe sometime slightly before.

Lani: Yes, early you did something there, and then you got involved in Firestation 18. I had been working with another group to try to save Firestation 25. I'd also been working with people on the old Martha Washington School when I met Larry in architecture graduate school at the University of Washington. We went to undergraduate schools at UW in different programs so we did not meet until grad school.

Larry: Around the same time the Fire Department was making noise about tearing down Fire Station 18, one of the first public buildings built in Ballard after its annexation. I had called the station and arranged to come over with another student to photograph the building, to at least document it before it was torn down. Right in the middle of the shoot we heard these sirens and in burst Gordon Vickery, the fire chief at the time.

He had us physically removed -- literally tossed out onto the street. That got my attention and turned me overnight into an activist. I started writing editorials and making as many waves as I could. I remember Betty Bowen (she was a great lady) waking me up one morning thinking we should organize a tea or something to support the fire station's preservation. Luckily, the Fire Department couldn't get the rear access they needed for a contemporary fire station at this site, so Vickery overnight became the great preservationist and advocated for another site on Market Street nearer to 15th.

Lani: Regarding Firestation 25, one idea we pursued was a combination restaurant, museum and public space. We were trying to do something for the public -- to get people into the building -- to use and to enjoy it, and we had a financial backer who was interested in a restaurant. We're talking about college student days in the late 1960s, early 70s. At that time, Firestation 25 was just abandoned, empty. You could just go in there. I was into photography too, and I wandered around the building many times taking photos and discovering that it was an incredible space.

When I learned they were going to tear it down, it was like, "How could they do that? People should be IN this place." So we were looking at how to save the building, wondering "could we find somebody?" At the time, I was in college, but I had to make money too, so I was working for ACME Food Sales, a food importer. They were located in the building where NBBJ is now (111 South Jackson Street); it was a warehouse then, so I knew that building when it was full of cans!

One of the owners of Acme Food Sales, the son, was looking for opportunities, and as I excitedly described this threatened, old, vacant building and he said, "Oh, a restaurant!" We thought maybe you could also have a public space, and maybe even a museum, and maybe we can get people from the fire department interested in a museum. Well I don't know about the proverbial lead balloon, but it was a good try. It was challenging trying to find something that might work. Firestation 25 eventually was redeveloped by others,, but at least it is still there.

Larry, you never said why you were interested in saving something in Ballard.

Larry: Well I grew up here. My Scandinavian roots are here, my family all grew up in Ballard, both my mother and father, although they didn't seem to have retained any real connection with their past. When I was a kid I moved so many times. I went to nine different schools in five different states. Looking back, it seems that practically every single place I went to school was torn down.

My first school, Haller Lake Elementary School, was torn down for Lakeside Middle School. Later, I went to Richmond Beach Elementary School. When I went there, it was a little town, with a post office and a railroad station, and there were remains of the old shipyard where the park is now. There was also a drug store, a library, a grocery store, all of that was in a little tiny mosquito fleet community that was quickly becoming a suburb of Seattle. I grew up walking through all this stuff.

Later, my folks were moving all over the place, Montana, South Dakota, Missouri, and North Dakota, because my dad was with Boeing. We were moved all around, I felt totally un-rooted. So coming back, when I got back to Seattle, I adopted Ballard as my home, a home away from home. During my senior year at the University of Washington, I really became interested in our local history.

A couple of years before, I had read Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities, and during that year it slowly sunk in -- our urban environments are what we make them. I knew my own family, as Scandinavian Americans, had their roots in Ballard, so I started looking around and found an architectural student who was writing his thesis on Ballard Avenue. He was doing the typical urban design thing of the time that included cleaning the street up and removing the telephone poles. Ballard just started pulling me in and I ended up writing a couple of papers on Ballard's history.

But that was before the Ballard Avenue Landmark District started. Because of my interest, I became a member of the citizens group for the district, the one that started the district. I got to know Earl Layman, my greatest inspiration then.

Lani: Another thing that influenced both of us, but in different ways, has been travel. When you travel to other areas, you reflect back, and especially in places with many layers of history, like Europe, it makes make you realize why there are values worth dealing with in the architectural and related professions.

I took advantage of the University's study abroad program and went to England with David Streatfield on his England architecture/landscape architecture study program. So many new and wonderful places we saw. It was easy to get into the excitement. So when you come back to your hometown, you search for those, you say, "where are our gems."

Larry: Yes, but that reminds me of a funny story about Art Skolnik and Ballard. He had just gotten back from Poland, and during the public hearings about establishing the Ballard Avenue Historic District, Art made a presentation to the community trying to make the point that Poland was way in advance of us in historic preservation. Well this old Norwegian fellow raised his hand and addressed Art. "Mr. Skolnik," he said, "I would like to point out to you that Poland is a communist country." That took Art completely aback. I don't think he was totally prepared for Ballard.

HM:Well, Warsaw is still rebuilding.

Larry: In Ballard, I eventually became chair of the Ballard Avenue Landmark District, serving for five or six years . That's where I met John (Chaney). John was the staff person for Urban Conservation (Seattle's Landmarks Office) assigned to Ballard.

HM: It sounds like you were coming into preservation in Seattle when preservation was starting to be like a real thing here. After 1973 and the landmarks ordinance.

Larry: Yes, I regret I never had Victor Steinbrueck as a professor. But I really liked Folke Nyberg. Victor and Folke were very close and I often joined them for coffee at the School of Architecture coffee shop.

Lani: Folke influenced you, and so did Victor. Victor was one of my heroes. I thought he was great.

Larry: Folke used to work for the City of Seattle, for the City Architects office, and he was doing those surveys with Victor at the same time.

HM: What was the character of preservation in Seattle in the mid-1970s?

Lani: Distressing. Because at least coming in as an outsider, preservation wasn't much of a major value here.

Larry: For example, at one time, the AIA had state preservation coordinators, and I ended up serving as Washington State's representative for several years. I remember that sometime in the early 1980s the national office sent out a survey to all the state representatives asking for information about preservation efforts in our state prior to 1950, and I had to respond that there hadn't been any.

I couldn't say anything else as I didn't know of anybody who actually worked in the field here as opposed to the East Coast where historic preservation had taken root much earlier. Here, everybody wanted to tear everything down, like on the waterfront, the wonderful little firestation there, for instance. It wasn't just an overnight change, because people were still tearing down things even while we were preserving Pike Place Market or Pioneer Square.

Lani: It was amazing to me, how there were wonderful things here that nobody paid attention to. Back around 1969, 1970, or so, when I used to work down at the old Acme Food Sales building at First and Jackson, I'd sometimes walk up to the Smith Tower after work, and one of my great delights was to take the elevator to the top, which back then was empty.

Lani: There was a large, dusty open area on that observation level, and a bunch of old chinoise furniture that was piled up there. I used to sit up there by myself and watch sunsets -- it was incredible. That's where I took all my friends -- anybody who hadn't been there. Remember, I said, "Larry, you've got to go up to this place." There were some wonderful things there, but I was amazed that people didn't appreciate them.

What also struck me when I came here was what I call the "cowboy engineer mentality" of Seattle. We look at Seattle's history, and it was like, "Well, we'll just raise this lake and lower this, tear down a few hills, etc. It was sort of like, "okay you can't save everything and you shouldn't, so you have to move on." But somewhere along the way, you truly do have to draw up some values, and that's what puzzled me coming here in the late 1960s: what were the values?

Larry: One major loss during the 1970s was the White Henry Stuart Building. It was a beautiful white terra cotta complex in the University Tract where the Rainier Bank Building now stands. We also lost some great theaters, the Orpheum, where the Weston is, and of course much later, the Music Hall. Another was the Bay Building.

Lani: As far as the early preservation efforts in Seattle were concerned, here are two things to consider. First of all, it was during a period of student activism, Vietnam, and taking on the establishment over values that were a little different. But at the same time, there was also what I call an "either/or mentality" that meant not considering whether we can do something that will preserve this building AND build an office tower too. Instead, it was "we will tear this down, or build a building."

There was rarely a thought about compromises. It was a different way of thinking. Also think of what architecture was like in the early 70s with the Brutalist architecture trends, you didn't "need" to spend time on ornament, much less, historic preservation.

A lot of the people were thinking that if you wanted to save old buildings, why were you studying architecture? Architects want to build new buildings, right? Remember Larry when you were on the AIA committee, you innocently proposed conducting a study of buildings downtown that would be worth saving? And you wanted to do landmark nominations for these buildings -- people looked at you aghast like, "who is this?"

Larry: I was the chair of the AIA's historic resources committee in the early 80s. We had all these talented people on the committee, so I thought, why don't we proactively write a lot of landmark nominations for some of these buildings? The fact was, I didn't understand that the AIA board wouldn't support me since most of the architects in town at the time saw demolition of the old as an opportunity for a fresh architectural commission.

Lani: But in today's world, when you're dealing with a cultural value, a historic value, I think people are a little more open, definitely more open to talking about compromises than they were in the late 1960s in Seattle, that's a big difference.

HM: So would you say that's the biggest difference?

Larry: I think preservation is more institutionalized now. Developers are much more aware that historic preservation issues need to be addressed early, and either accepted or dismissed. No one thinks you can just tear down something that the community thinks is important without a fight, and most developers try to avoid controversy.

Lani: There's greater awareness, and the fact that before you do a major project downtown, one has to at least determine if there's a historic or cultural value. This has now become a part of our institutionalized permit/project review process.

Larry: Like the Parks Department. They are much more aware of their historic resources now.

Lani: Yes, you didn't see that sort of sensitivity earlier. This is an improvement.

Larry: At least they're looking at potential consequences to historic resources now. The School District currently reviews historic impacts for its schools before making renovation decisions, but choices have to be made and you can't save everything. What you don't see is the Monorail being sufficiently concerned; both of us believe the threat to Second Avenue is serious. At least, developers are now being sent to the Office of Urban Conservation to see if there's an issue with a given building before you they do anything.

Like the Rhodes Building (southwest corner of Second and Union), for instance. I prepared a landmark nomination for the developer of the new Washington Mutal Tower and Seattle Art Museum expansion that will be located on the site. The building had been so badly altered over the years, that there was hardly anything of importance left, I was really torn. I remember going to that department store as a kid and listening to the organ.

HM: Yes, there are a lot of people who are really upset about the Rhodes Building, and it's hard to respond to people how the integrity of a building relates to whether or not a building is a landmark. There are a number of people who are disappointed that Historic Seattle didn't take a stand about the Landmarks Board's decision about the Rhodes Building, but I've said you can't save everything, and this wasn't an easy decision.

Larry: When I present a nomination to the landmarks board, they really aren't interested in my feelings, or at least shouldn't be. I do the best job I can to tell the story of the building, and the people who occupied it.

Lani: - It's the difference between technical and persuasive writing. You wrote the nomination for Pier 59 objectively, and low and behold, I think you were surprised to see that one designated.

HM: What would you consider to be the best preservation save over the last 30 years? And on the other side, worst preservation losses?

Larry: The loss of the Music Hall Theater.

Lani: I'd like to say that sometimes the small things are really important. I've done years and years of work on the waterfront area on waterfront projects, and while I'm so happy to see those little bungalows preserved (the Belltown Cottages), I was deeply saddened to see the old "Jello mold" building go, that was a piece of Seattle history. It had all these Jello molds on it, and had been a roadhousy place, local history indeed, but not the most distinguished building. In a lot of cases, it's not just the big buildings and big structures that give interest and a sense of community to a place. Another factor is context -- this is why retaining the character of Downtown's Second Avenue is so important. Another consideration is reuse -- such as Town Hall (the old Fourth Church of Christ Scientist). Both Larry and I helped with early efforts to preserve that building not only because of its architectural merits, but also because it could provide a unique historical context for arts performances, which need a particular type of venue. Historic Seattle's role was crucial in saving that building.

Larry: Ballard Avenue is a great success because basically it has kept a little grittiness. I fought to keep the telephone poles on the street. There were telephone poles in 1910, why would you try to take those out? So, to me, it is about trying to keep the last few things that are real. The whole thing about the working waterfront downtown is great nostalgia, but it's gone. That goes for the maritime community as well.

There's so little appreciation of Seattle's maritime heritage and the few things that are worth saving are, by their very nature, ephemeral. The question is, "how do you preserve what ever is left?" They aren't building schooners on the beach anymore. The Center for Wooden Boats at least does a good job of trying to explain about boat building and general maritime heritage.

Also, one of the biggest issues in downtown Seattle is the absence of historic churches. In Portland, they still have their historic churches downtown. We only have First Methodist, and we don't know how long that will remain.

Lani: For me, one of the number one issues is First United Methodist downtown. It's the last one downtown, it's a wonderful building, it functions very well as a public space, very well as a concert space -- it's criminal to tear it down. You go to any great city, you have historic churches downtown. It's great to see, even if the church isn't your particular religious direction. These architectural landmarks add grace to a city. I hope that one will not be on our list of worst losses.

Maybe it will be one of the top best saves.

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