as club members and presidents of neighboring clubs were in attendance. The event was followed by a luncheon for board members at the Olympic Hotel. Construction commenced immediately with the steel structure of the building. The Wallace Bridge Company, who also constructed the structures of the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon, manufactured and assembled the building's steel frame. Over 1,200 tons of steel was used in construction with the beams over the main ballroom weighing 18 tons each. The steel frame was then encased in concrete. Tragedy struck on April 26, 1930 when Albert J. Triggs, superintendent for the Sound Construction Company was crushed to death when a section of the concrete structure collapsed on top of him. The steel frame was mostly completed by July and the brick sheathing followed soon after. By late December 1930 the building would be complete at a total cost of $2.5 million. Grand opening and design The Washington Athletic Club officially opened on December 16, 1930 followed by a week long celebration of dining, dancing and facility touring. Upon completion, the club, dubbed 'the skyscraper of sports' by local media, made a major addition to Seattle's skyline and was even erroneously said to be taller than Seattle's other art deco skyscraper, the Northern Life Tower. While the latter contained seven more floors, the W.A.C.'s floors were claimed to be taller. Of special note at the time was that out of superstition, the building had no 13th floor, or at least according to the elevators whose buttons skipped from 12 to 14. A full-page article in the Seattle Times from December 16, described the layout of the new building in detail: Women were largely segregated from men in the new quarters, having their own entrance and elevator as described by the article: The fourth floor contained the men's grill restaurant while the above that were the men's area including most of the athletic aspects of the club: The entire seventh and eighth floors were occupied by the swimming pool while the ninth floor, the top floor of the building's base section, contained sleeping rooms for guests of club members. The twelve story tower contained 125 hotel-like rooms "for the use of club members" while a conference room occupied the very top floor. The Athletic club soon became the social epicenter of Washington's athletic community and hosted