The old Georgetown Steam Plant is only open once a month — the second Saturday, and there are two tours. You don’t have to take the tour to get a look around but you should because, as the woman at the door said, “It’s just so freaking cool.” She was not wrong.
The tour guide, a talkative man named Mike, said that even though he works for Seattle City Light, he’s not an engineering expert. “You gotta ask Ted about that stuff, I’m more of a history guy.” I think he underestimated his skills, but Ted, the other Seattle City Light staffer, seemed to know a lot more about mechanics and math. From Mike, we learned that particular plant is important because it’s one of the first reinforced concrete buildings on the West Coast. And it’s the only place where you can see Collins vertical turbines,installed in a place where they were meant to be used. “There’s one in a field outside the old General Electric plant back east, but it’s a museum piece. This place shows you how they worked.”
On the ground floor of the building, there were a couple of Nerdy Old Guys fussing with model steam engines, little table top whirring machines that sort of mimicked the giant cast iron and brass monsters that filled the plant. They were intently focused on little parts and discussing what various engine types would have been used for.
The plant powered Seattle’s streetcars, among other things, and our guide was thoughtful about tying the idea of reliable public transportation to urban growth, something that we’re dealing with in Seattle right now, every day. That the plant had been designed by Frank Gilbreath, an efficiency expert. He was married to the brilliant and underappreciated Lillian Moller and together, they had 12 children. The 1950 Hollywood classic, Cheaper by the Dozen, is based on a book by Frank Jr. and Ernestine, two of their kids.
(You may, like me, have mixed this up with Yours, Mine, and Ours, a 1968 film about a different huge family. I found a place to watch Cheaper by the Dozen online and quit about 20 minutes in. The way the younger girls had their bangs curled was stressing me out something fierce.)
The boiler room is literally a steam punk fantasy with all kinds of valves and spigots and meters and heavy oven doors on complicated hinges. Seattle City Light allows some performance and event here; that sounds like about the coolest thing ever. It’s pretty much a band photo shoot dream, though visitors aren’t allowed to do portrait work on tour days — you have to arrange for that separately. You can take photos though and tripods are allowed. There was a group of sketchbook artists wandering the catwalks too; it was fun to look over their shoulders and see them rendering the pipes and tanks and giant bolts.
In the early 1900s, the plant generated about 21 megawatts at capacity. For perspective, Boundary Dam, in northeast Washington, generates almost 1200 megawatts at capacity. I had to look up what my power usage is when I got home. It’s about 6 megawatts a year. A lot more than people used in the 1900s, that’s for sure.
The plant is being lovingly restored to its original state — as a National Historic Site it’s getting some National Park Service love. That’s cool, though there a plans to strip all the white paint off the building to return it to its original, less appealing khaki color. Any boarded over windows are not boarded because they’re broken, it’s because they’re up in a shop on Whidbey Island going through rehab. Seattle City Light is looking for a partner to manage the property for them; it sounds like there’s no official museum foundation yet. That seems like it will be good for the property in the long run, but if you like things before they’ve gone all official, go visit sooner rather than later. I bet you won’t be able to sit at the foreman’s desk after the renovation is complete.
Want to visit the Georgetown Steam Plant? Learn more here. Oh, and heads up, your phone will not get you there. Go south on Warsaw from Ellis and make for the big white building.
Have fun, nerds. I did.
Just saw http://www.museumofcommunications.org/ and now I think you should tour that too. Pretty close to the steam plant. Add the Living Computer Museum and you can have an “homage to old tech” series.