club, the Arctic Club, formed as a result of the merger of the Arctic Brotherhood and of the Alaska Club, would erect a building for itself at Third Avenue and Jefferson Street, now the Morrison Hotel. As the first steel-frame structure of any height in the Northwest, the Alaska Building was Seattle's first "skyscraper" and its tallest building – a distinction that it held until 1911. In addition to its height, it is notable for its Beaux Arts ornamentation, which is a rarity in Seattle. When the building opened, the Alaska Club, a prominent commercial organization of residents and entrepreneurs, convened in the penthouse, and maintained a reading room that featured Alaska newspapers and mineral exhibits; the Scandinavian-American banking hall occupied the main floor. The Alaska Building heralded the development of other imposing structures on what soon became the city's major commercial strip, popularly known as the Second Avenue canyon. In their book Hard Drive to the Klondike, Lisa Mighetto and Marcia Babcock Montgomery state: "This fourteen-story structure symbolized the significance of the gold rush in Seattle. The porthole windows along the top floor looked out over the waterfront, providing a view of the shipbuilding, shipping and rail industries that the gold rush encouraged. For many years a gold nugget embedded in the building's front door reminded visitors of the stampede and the city's connection to the Far North." The Alaska Building remains a dominant structure on the northern cusp of the Pioneer Square Historic District, which was created by a City of Seattle ordinance in 1970, and which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places the same year as the Pioneer Square Skid Road National Historic District. The Alaska Building was rehabilitated by the architects Stickney/Murphy in 1982. References External links Courtyard Seattle Downtown/Pioneer Square Courtyard by Marriott hotels Landmarks in Seattle Skyscraper hotels in Seattle