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  1. Special Projects
  2. Harborview Hall

Harborview Hall

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King County is working on a plan to preserve Harborview Hall, a landmark building in the heart of Seattle’s hospital district. The building is important to the history and culture of Seattle and King County, and its preservation and rehabilitation also make economic and environmental sense. For many years Harborview Medical Center has planned to demolish the Hall, but King County feels there are significant benefits to preserving Harborview Hall. The building can be rehabilitated and put back into service without expending any new taxpayer dollars, and providing well over 100,000 square feet of usable space in an area expected to experience strong growth. The building is also eligible for the National Register of Historic Places; rehabilitation creates more local labor jobs than new construction and produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Harborview Hall: Home to Medical History For nearly 80 years the Art Deco hall has stood across from Harborview Hospital. It represents a place in time when UW established the School of Nursing in the 1930s as one of the best nursing programs in the nation, a ranking that continues today. The teaching model was a first on the West Coast and second only to Yale University, nationally. In the late 1940s history was again made when the first African Americans enrolled in the nursing program, lived at Harborview Hall and worked at Harborview Hospital.