Space Needle

The Space Needle in Seattle is an iconic landmark of the city and a 605-foot (184-meter) observation and restaurant tower originally built for the 1962 World's Fair. One of the first structures of its kind in North America to feature a revolving restaurant, it went on to serve as an architectural model for many other observation towers around the world in the decades that followed. The tower's futuristic style, classified as Googie design, reflects the fair's theme at the time, which explored life in the Space Age. Today the structure defines Seattle's skyline and draws more than a million visitors a year, who come to enjoy one of the best views of the city and its surroundings.

The idea for the tower came from Edward E. Carlson, chairman of the World's Fair commission, during a visit to the Stuttgart TV Tower in the spring of 1959. Impressed by the economic and tourist appeal of the restaurant at the top of the tower there, he came up with a plan to create a similar structure for the fair in Seattle. The architect John Graham Jr. received the commission for the design and, drawing on his earlier experience with revolving restaurants in Honolulu, proposed a similar construction. The first designs were still rather adventurous and had to undergo structural review before they could be built.

Financing the project proved difficult at first, as the expected costs ran to several million dollars. Attempts to win over local television stations or government agencies as investors failed. In the end, the project was funded privately, among others by the architect John Graham and the contractor Howard S. Wright. The question of the site also remained unresolved for a long time, until Graham acquired a plot in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood. After extensive engineering revisions, which gave the tower its characteristic elegance, financing was secured through a consortium of banks.

Construction began in April 1961 and, because of the delayed planning, had to be completed in great haste to be ready for the opening of the World's Fair. The foundation consists of a heavy Y-shaped block of concrete that keeps the tower stable during earthquakes and storms. The curved steel legs were shipped from Chicago and assembled on site, using special techniques to achieve the desired curvature. There were no fatal accidents during the entire construction period, and the tower opened to the public in April 1962, one day before the fair opened.