Restored pergola expected to shine for Christmas

MomSeattle · DadSeattle · SPI · MySeattlePix · My account

Local

US/World

Sports

Business

A&E

Life

Comics

Photos

Opinion

Blogs

Buy Ads

NWsource

Restored pergola expected to shine for Christmas

Saturday, March 24, 2001

By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

ITS FALL was symbolic of sad things to follow. But Seattle's landmark Pioneer Square pergola -- cruelly wrecked Jan. 15 by a wayward 18-wheeler -- will be back in time for Christmas, beckoning better times to come.

That's the intention of the company working hard to make it happen.

Heidi Seidelhuber and Terry Seaman of the third generation Seidelhuber Iron and Bronze Works know Seattle will accept no substitutes. So the husband-and-wife team is resurrecting the original from its broken shards and hunks.

Even the hard-eyed and practical seem intent on putting it back the way it was, Seaman said this week. "People want to look at the real thing, not a re-creation."

With wonder this week, I picked my way across a sprawling expanse that seemed part archaeological dig, part wreckage from a long-lost plane crash.

It was a relief that my role was merely to write about it.

My field guide, Seidelhuber, must actually do the job of fitting thousands of pieces back together -- some of them as big and heavy as a roof beam and some as tiny and twisted as a pretzel.

Earlier, in their construction shack office, Seidelhuber and Seaman had given me glad tidings of great joy across broad tables spread with stacks of hand-drawn sketches.

With luck, the 91-year-old canopy would stage a holiday comeback.

Pictures on the drafting room wall and an album filled with photos of elaborate projects dating back to the early 1900s attested that this company knows what it's doing.

"This (the pergola) is the weirdest thing we've done. But it isn't the only weird thing we've done," Seaman said with a chuckle.

Recent work by Seidelhuber and Co. includes the elegant but sturdy light-filled stair and elevator enclosure at Colman Dock. And a series of one-way moose-control gates designed for isolated regions of Alaska.

The company's bread-and-butter work as a steel-job shop frequently calls for "we need it yesterday" pieces to be rushed to big outfits putting up mammoth structures such as Seattle's new football stadium.

And its own large-scale jobs include the mostly unseen structural skeletons of buildings all over King County.

That work must go on even though hundreds of feet of space are now occupied with numbered pieces of the pergola, the top rim of which will within a month rise to eye-level for a tryout to see what fits.

The owners -- fine artists in their few spare hours -- seem creative and intrepid enough for their daunting assignment. But just look at what they're up against.

Some torqued and jagged pieces of the pergola were transported to trucks by heavy construction cranes from the spot where the fractured mess lay after the crash. Other splinters were so tiny they had to be cleaned out of the foliage by hand with rakes.

When he first saw the remains, all sandblasted and laid out in his hangar-size shed near Seattle's industrial South Park district, Seaman admits it was even worse than he had feared.

And, when his wife realized that no exact plans existed for the structure (not even from major repair work done in 1972) it hit her that the job would be akin to rebuilding an airplane from wreckage -- without a blueprint.

No parent's Christmas Eve "some assembly required" toy nightmare has ever come close. Not even when the instructions are in Romanian.

All the support columns broke off at the base -- but not cleanly. Even disassembling what wasn't broken was arduous and dangerous. For one thing, many of the cast-iron angles were held with steel clips installed by artisans working in the field in 1910.

This is no Lego set with interchangeable joints. Even if it's still intact, the connector for one corner doesn't fit the groove or hole in another.

Still, an unquenchable can-do spirit has seized Seidelhuber, Seaman and their crew of welders, electricians and artisans. Some of them are working past retirement to get the job done because their skills are no longer taught in trade schools.

A palpable feeling of excitement and possibility infuses the vast and echoing shop.

On the day I visited, mechanic and master fitter Bob Fertado cradled a wrought-iron curlicue from a broken light pole in his palm. He was literally bent on putting it right.

An acre away, behind a plastic curtain to hold in heat, Pat Egbert painstakingly tested different welding techniques to withstand 18-wheelers and earthquakes, too.

So far, Heidi Seidelhuber's plan is to put 3 1/2-inch steel pipe through each of the 12 broken column supports with square tubing slipped over that. Unseen, the skeleton bearing the pergola's weight will be fastened to new footing buried beneath the cobblestone park.

Sure, everyone is watching. Sure, a city's expectations ride on their shoulders. But Seidelhuber says she feels privileged to be doing this work. And she's more confident now that she has a handle on how to go about things.

Meanwhile, it's her husband who's been seized by Christmas fever. Like a professorial Santa Claus, Seaman is happily determined that the job gets done in time for Christmas. "When it fell, the pergola still had Christmas lights on it," Seaman said. "I want it back up, with the lights on, for this holiday. The mayor certainly wants that, too. And, somehow, the city seems to need it to happen. This pergola belongs to everyone."

The fall of the pergola seemed a signal, an omen of bad things to come for Seattle.

The Mardi Gras riots, the earthquake, the drought, and then the desertion of Boeing headquarters followed. Even the raising of the old landmark won't bring back Kristopher Kime, the young man who was killed close by during Mardi Gras. But being able to stand gazing up at the touchstone again this Christmas is sure to lift Seattle's spirits.

Susan Paynter's column appears Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays. Call her at 206-448-8392 or send e-mail to susanpaynter@seattle-pi.com.

Add Susan Paynter headlines to