Cityscape

The Columbia Center is the tallest building in Seattle, and with 76 stories,^[32] has a greater number of floors than any other building west of the Mississippi River.
The Space Needle is a defining symbol of the Seattle skyline.
The Smith Tower, the oldest skyscraper in Seattle, was the tallest building on the West Coast from its completion in 1914 until the Space Needle overtook it in 1962.
The Washington Mutual Tower is the second tallest building in the Seattle skyline and is the former headquarters of Washington Mutual.
The Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University was designed by Steven Holl.^[33]
The Seattle Central Library was designed by Office for Metropolitan Architecture^[34]
The Starbucks Center in Seattle's SODO neighborhood just south of downtown is the largest building in Seattle, at just over 2 million square feet. The building, once the Sears northwest catalog distribution center, now serves as the Corporate Support Center for Starbucks as well as containing Sears and OfficeMax stores.^[35]

Landmarks

The Space Needle is Seattle's most recognizable landmark, having been featured in the logo of the television show Frasier and the backgrounds of the television series Grey's Anatomy, not to mention several films. "The Needle", dates from the 1962 Century 21 Exposition. Contrary to popular belief, the Space Needle is neither the tallest structure in Seattle nor is it in Downtown. This misconception results from the Space Needle often being photographed from Queen Anne Hill, where it is closer to the viewer than are the downtown skyscrapers. The fairgrounds surrounding the Needle have been converted into Seattle Center, which remains the site of many local civic and cultural events, such as Bumbershoot, Folklife, and the Bite of Seattle. The Seattle Center Monorail runs from Seattle Center to Westlake Center, a downtown shopping mall: a distance of about a little over a mile.

Other notable Seattle landmarks include the Smith Tower, Pike Place Market, the Fremont Troll, the Experience Music Project (which is at Seattle Center), the new Seattle Central Library, the Washington Mutual Tower, Broadway, a street made famous by the Sir Mix-A-Lot song Posse On Broadway, and the Columbia Center, which is the fourth tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi River and the twelfth tallest in the nation. (On June 16 2004, the 9/11 Commission reported that the original plan for the September 11, 2001 attacks included the Columbia Center as one of ten targeted buildings.)^[36]

Starbucks Coffee has been at Pike Place Market since the coffee company was founded there in 1971. The first store is still operating a block south of its original location.^[37]

Street layout

Seattle's streets are laid out in a cardinal-direction grid pattern, except in the central business district: early city leaders Arthur Denny and Carson Boren insisted on orienting their plats relative to the shoreline rather than to true North, so streets meet at unusual angles where Denny's plat meets "Doc" Maynard's to the south and Boren's to the north. This inconsistency creates frequent confusion for visitors and newcomers when they attempt to navigate the streets at the edges of the business district. Largely as a result of Seattle's topography, only one street and one freeway run uninterrupted through the city from north to south.