Dear Diary,
I'm sorry this is much later than I'd planned. When I started working on its map on Sunday, I realised I'd forgotten to take postcard shots of the buildings in this area that actually have worry-free public restrooms. (I also had a lot of trouble pinning down the dates of someone a building is named after.) So I went Monday to take those photos, but then ran out of time to write the whole part. See, this is really part of campus, and there are at least twenty-seven buildings in the area this part covers, from NE 41st St to the Burke-Gilman Trail. Also, I now have a next-door neighbour again, so can't work after quiet time starts. I was distracted Tuesday by Windows updates, casting my vote, and election news. When I sat down last night to write, I found a bunch of other problems, and again had to stop four buildings from the end. So...
As before, I've uploaded all my photos of these buildings' door signage (taken November 2nd) to a folder at my Google Drive. I should clarify, though, that I don't photograph all doors. I look for doors with signage that I consider relevant to whether the public may enter the building, and if so, under what conditions (especially, building hours). Those, I photograph. Doors without signage, or with only signage such as "Use that other door" or "208-N" or "Go Huskies!", I don't photograph. Exception: If none of the doors have relevant signage, I may photograph whatever I consider the front door by way of showing I did in fact visit the building. (Building S, for example, below.)
Map. On the same principles as before except that I drew NE Lincoln Way in black and Cowlitz Road NE in purple.
OK, then.
West Campus
West Campus, as I said in the previous part, is the most urban of the four designated parts of UW's Seattle campus. This northern half of it is less urban than the scattered buildings to the north, but more urban than the southern half still to come, let alone the other campuses. Campus Parkway has tons of traffic lights and normal traffic (except that it's extremely bus-heavy); most of the other roads have sidewalks. Some of the buildings weren't originally built for the university, but many were.
Two buildings that aren't the university's are ensconced within this part of West Campus: the College Inn, and a building belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
The South and East campuses each have a major and a minor theme to their buildings. I'm not sure whether to say the same of West Campus, whose buildings serve very diverse purposes, but if I did, the major theme would have to be residential, both dorms and apartment buildings, and the minor theme might be the water, with the Fishery Sciences complex at the southeast end.
Red - Locked
If any of your readers find these buildings uninteresting, dear Diary, please tell them it's a very long way to the next category, which begins with T. Before then, the dorms are A-B and D-G; an apartment building is S.
Elm Hall (A on map)
Address: 1218 NE Campus Parkway
When planning to leave the dorms out of this series, I'd forgotten that at least the West Campus dormitories have, just like many apartment buildings elsewhere in town, retail on their ground floors. In Elm Hall's case, the two establishments are Fitness Center West (on the Campus Parkway side) and a restaurant, Cultivate (near the 41st St side).
I found Fitness Center West's door open, it does not have any sign saying it's only open to the UW-affiliated, and someone there has taken the trouble to post a "No Public Restrooms" sign. You'll soon see, dear Diary, that this is all very weird by the standards of UW dorm retail. I don't know whether the general public is allowed to use the fitness machines, but at least we're allowed to walk in, and I have no idea why. (UW's Web page for it says we aren't. This makes sense - I mean, sheesh, why let adults in general into a place so suitable for ogling? But what I found differs.) One could argue that when students dress down to go to the gym they have trouble carrying their cards, so it makes sense to turn the card reader green. But yesterday evening I found the place in use, but the card reader red, so at least sometimes students in track suits can remember their cards; and that still doesn't explain why the "No Public Restrooms" sign and why not the "UW-affiliated only" sign. And the card reader was green again this afternoon.
Cultivate, which its operator, UW, calls "gastropub-style", is one of several places to eat and/or drink in these dorms that haven't yet re-opened. Its door carries their standard line: "Only UW students, staff, faculty and other invited guests are authorized to enter".
Poplar Hall (B on map)
Address: 1302 NE Campus Parkway
Poplar Hall's ground-floor establishments are unusual ones: the UW Food Pantry and the Arts UW Ticket Office. I found both already re-opened.
Only the UW-affiliated may patronise the food pantry. Only the UW-affiliated and UW retirees may volunteer. And although they welcome donations from others on their Web page, I have a story about that.
As I've told you, dear Diary, I used to spend a lot of time in Savery Hall. A year or two before the pandemic, I found a big stack of blue books, which are used in taking some exams, in one of the classrooms there, at the end of a quarter. I left it alone for a few days, but nobody claimed it, so I did, figuring I could try to find some way to get them to someone with a use for them, but not if they'd been thrown away first. A friend of mine pointed out that students have to pay for those, and suggested the food pantry as a good way to distribute them. It was a pretty weird experience having to talk the people there into letting me in long enough to give them the books. Maybe donors who look less homeless than I then did are greeted with less suspicion.
The ticket office appears not to be documented online, but I'm pretty sure they're willing to sell tickets to the general public. However, they allow in-person visits only by appointment, and only within limited hours. And I'd be shocked if they offered public restrooms.
The Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse (C on map)
Address: 4045 University Way NE
Named after: Floyd Jones, 1927-2018, and Delores Jones, née Haglund, 1925-2005.
The first of many venues for artistic or athletic endeavour that I, in this page, will philistinely classify as "Locked". Sure, it's occasionally open to customers, but in this case, I didn't see any signs announcing when that might next happen.
Alder Hall (D on map)
Address: 1315 NE Campus Parkwa
Alder Hall's amenities include District Market, a grocery store, with the Husky Grind coffeeshop inside, and Alder Commons, a big space mostly full of seating whose doors I didn't try. I don't know how long District Market has been there, but with the now years-long closure of this neighbourhood's only supermarket, Safeway [1], it isn't really a frill. Its doors are open (in fact, like most grocery store doors, open automatically), but carry the familiar warning:
It doesn't look like they take food stamps, either. (The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has rules specific to college students, so this isn't just me whining about not being able to shop here. Does UW actually know that none of its students get food stamps? And for that matter its faculty or staff?) I think it's highly likely that the market/café complex includes restrooms that don't require going through the dorm proper to reach, but since the public is forbidden to enter, I haven't verified that.
[1] Whatever Trader Joe's is, it isn't a supermarket. And I do know it doesn't have public restrooms, which the old Safeway sort of did and the new one, if it ever opens, may.
Lander Hall (E on map)
Address: 1201 NE Campus Parkway
Named after: Edward Lander, 1816-1907
Lander's ground-floor operations are two. The Lander Desk is where all the West Campus dorms' service questions and package deliveries are directed to; it's nobody's business but the residents'.
Local Point's Web page lacks the usual negative formula, instead saying "Note: All campus dining locations are open to the UW community." I'd taken this photo of its door, showing that its card reader goes red at 2 P.M.:
But although my several photos of its doorway didn't show the standard line, that's because it's on a window adjacent to the doorway.
Also, it turns out to be a cafeteria, not a restaurant, anyway, though its seating area is so immense that I saw a lot of people just studying there.
Maple Hall (F on map)
Address: 1135 NE Campus Parkway
Maple's ground-floor amenity is an ill-defined space called Area 01. I've seen it claimed that Area 01 is only a games area in the southeast corner, where I saw some pool tables. But actually, by door signage, Area 01 occupies most of the ground floor. (It helps separate the amenities in these buildings that they're all built on slopes. Local Point is below, as well as adjacent to, the Lander Desk; and Area 01 is below, as well as adjacent to, the one Maple-specific doorway, in the northeast. In fact a big sign by the northwestern door, on Campus Parkway, announces Area 01.) It seems to include a bunch of study rooms and, in the southwest corner, something called the Dabbler Lab that has sewing machines, and I'm not sure what-all else.
I was vexed with Maple Hall over one of the signs that adorn it, but the sign in question actually appears at all the Area 01 doors, but not the only identifiably Maple door. So Area 01 management seems to see fit to tell students this:
It's part of "learn to live" to understand that safety lies in following university policy by maintaining walls between the university affiliated and every stranger. Now, I have very little doubt that at this location, pretty near an edge of campus and close to some I-5 campers, care for locks actually is an important element of safety. And since Area 01 is an amenity at least for all the thousands of West Campus dorm and apartment residents, it's important to remind students that their own judgement as to who belongs and who doesn't may be unreliable. But equating the university's wall policy to safety both promises more than it can deliver (because danger needn't come from strangers), and costs too much (because every single visitor to Area 01 needs to interact with strangers). And doing so in posters on every door is just rude to any strangers who pass those posters.
Terry Hall (G on map)
Address: 1035 NE Campus Parkway
Named after: Charles Carroll Terry, 1829-1867, and Mary Jane Terry, née Russell, 1837-1875
Terry Hall, adjacent to the University Bridge head, has only one ground-floor enterprise, and it isn't an amenity for the students, exactly. It's their landlord: UW's Housing and Food Services is headquartered there. I'd put off masking up, walking in, and asking about public restrooms, but today when I went planning to do that, I noticed the standard line on the door, and dropped it.
Henderson Hall (H on map)
Address: 1013 NE 40th St
Named after: Joseph Edmonds Henderson, 1901-1994, whose middle name is often spelt Edmunds
This is the home of the Applied Physics Laboratory, which in a mildly ironic history long ago divorced the Department of Physics, and more recently, but still long ago, was one of the founding partners in the College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences. The APL was founded at the Navy's instigation, and Navy contracts continue to dominate, but it now has many other customers, and few of its Navy contracts are classified (classified research having driven some of the turbulence in its history). There's a good article on it and Henderson in an issue of what became Seattle Weekly, too long ago to have been digitised yet: "Fiscal Physics" by Keith Ervin, pp. 36-41 of the May 6-May 12, 1987, issue of the Weekly.
Anyway, whether their contracts are classified or not, this building is locked. Its signage tells visitors they should call the person they've come to visit.
Southwest Maintenance Building (I on map)
Address: 3902 Cowlitz Road NE
I initially found the door locked that I think is its front door, but ignored a side door that actually announces hours.
So today I went back, and nope, that door's locked too, during its posted hours. There was a note on the door urging Fed Ex drivers to knock loudly.
Child Center West Campus (J on map)
Address: 3904 Cowlitz Road NE
This is one of three child care centers shown on the map. Two of those are in West Campus. Of course none is open to random adults.
Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center (K on map)
Address: 3931 Brooklyn Ave NE
Named after: Samuel Eugene Kelly, 1926-2009
This product of a major 1960s protest currently has a sign on its door warning students to scan their cards after 5 P.M. It has no other hours signage, and I haven't found an open door before 5 P.M. either. At least it doesn't have signs equating "Safety" with "UW-only".
Brooklyn Trail Building (L on map)
Address: 3903 Brooklyn Ave NE
This building seems recently to have had a change in tenancy. The hours sign in its standard place on the door still says "Center for Child & Family Well-Being", and so do dozens of Web pages that refer to the address. But the Center now reports an address on Central Campus, and this building now belongs to the Department of Education. It still hosts a mental health clinic, though; but instead of the, um, diverse group of practitioners who seem linked to the Center, it's a School Psychology Clinic instead.
In any event, the stated hours, weekdays 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., don't mean an open door.
Purchasing and Accounting Building (M on map)
Address: 3917 University Way NE
This building has on its front door a sign saying its hours are Monday through Friday, 7:30 A.M. to 5 P.M., and also has on its front door a sign, falling down, saying that the building is locked because all departments that reside there are still working remotely.
Community Design Center (N on map)
Address: 3947 University Way NE
This building's northern glass wall is decorated with posters and such, looking rather like children's art but with a skill level suggesting teenaged artists, whether high school or college, and more or less related to its work. But the community its title refers to must be the university community, not the physical one. It's locked.
An unnamed building (O on map)
Address: 3935 University Way NE
The UW's Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress is here, posts no hours, and keeps its door locked.
An unnamed building (P on map)
Address: 3939 University Way NE
Something connected with the UW's Department of Psychology is here, posts no hours, and keeps its door locked.
West Campus Utility Plant (Q on map)
Address: 3900 University Way NE
It has hours posted as weekdays 7 A.M. to 2 P.M., and asks visitors to ring the doorbell or call. Since I judge this a foolish place to look for public restrooms, I did neither of those things.
West Receiving Station (R on map)
Address: 3903 15th Ave NE
This, where I think what's being received is electricity, eliminates the option of personal judgement. It's fenced round, and both of the ferociously locked gates in the fence say "Danger! High Voltage. Unauthorized Personnel Keep Out".
Commodore Duchess Apartments (S on map)
Address: 4005 15th Ave NE
Named after: A charming idea, but I doubt it. According to a book I own - page 108 of University of Washington, by Norman J. Johnston, part of the series "The Campus Guide", New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001 - this is two buildings built in different years for different owners by the same architect. I'm almost sure my first photo, which I took only because I thought the doorway looked good from that angle, shows the doorway of the Duchess. Sure enough, the doorway south of that one is labelled "The Commodore".
So although the idea of a Commodore Duchess is fun to contemplate, it's highly unlikely a real one is what this long-combined building is named after.
An apartment building with full-year leases and without ground-floor retail, owned by the UW but privately managed.
Orange - Unlocked, but No Public Restrooms
Transportation Services Building (T on map)
Address: 1320 NE Campus Parkway
Each time I've visited this building, it's been during its posted open hours - weekdays 8:30 A.M. to 4 P.M. And the door has been locked. The guy who came out when I tried the door the first time said it was his lunch break; the guy who came out the second time said the lock was malfunctioning. Dueling signs say visitors must make appointments, and say walk-ins are welcome. The one thing I'm sure of is that the area theoretically possibly maybe open to the public, which I've seen, offers no restrooms.
Ethnic Cultural Theatre (U on map)
Address: 3940 Brooklyn Ave NE
Named after: Some authorities refer to this, too, by Kelly's name; others don't; however, most reliable authorities do call it "Theatre", not "Theater"
As a theatre, this building is closed, like most of the UW performance halls. But it hosts something not expressed in the building name, the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity Instructional Center. Which advertises longer hours than most buildings on campus period, let alone West Campus, and has an open door. The main part, entered up a stairway from 40th St, opens at 9 A.M. weekdays, and closes at 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, and 5 P.M. Fridays. (An annex for math and physics, entered from Brooklyn Ave, closes earlier.) When I went around testing doors on a Tuesday evening - I think this was October 18th - it was open, and I, mystified, masked up and walked in. I explored fairly thoroughly, wasn't accosted although the place was mildly crowded, and didn't find restrooms.
When I went around taking photographs of doorways last week, I was shocked to find that this door has a card reader. It just isn't being used.
I feel very ill at ease telling people to look for public restrooms at this sort of location, which it seems to me should be locked (to minimise potential embarrassment for students being instructed), and am grateful that my failure to find any restrooms (even though there surely must be some, somewhere) relieves me of finding a further dodge.
University of Washington Lock Shop (V on map)
Address: 3901 University Way NE
Again, the area open to the public has no restrooms. The hours are weekdays 7:30 A.M. to noon and 1 to 3:30 P.M.
Also, I'm not sure how open it really is. I found it unlocked a few days ago, but when I went back today (incorrectly remembering dueling hours signs), shortly after I arrived I heard a click, and the card reader had gone red. The other use to the homeless or to weary travellers of a building without public restrooms is, of course, getting out of the weather. But perhaps this building shouldn't be tried for that.
Yellow - Unlocked, Public Restrooms, but Hours Problems
University of Washington Police Building (W on map)
Address: 3939 15th Ave NE
The door has extensive instructions for what one should do when it's locked, but doesn't say when that would normally be. Their website currently states hours of weekdays 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. I vaguely remember that when my laptop was stolen, five years ago this month, and I had to go to this building to report the theft, I ended up having to wait a couple of hours, and was allowed to use the restroom. I certainly don't suggest it as an ideal place to go just because of urgent need; a location still to come, one block west, has longer hours.
Green - All good, except we aren't wanted
Condon Hall (X on map)
Address: 1100 NE Campus Parkway
Named after: John Thomas Condon, 1863-1926
Condon Hall is mostly a classroom building, although CoMotion has a space somewhere in it. (It was for decades the home of the Law School, so it must have offices, but for most pedestrians seeking restrooms, I'm pretty sure the floor of entry is what matters, and I think all Condon's doors lead to classrooms first.) When I first visited for this project what I take to be its front double door, up a stairway from Campus Parkway, I found the side the lock is on to be locked, and a CoMotion sign telling people that if the door is locked they should call a number. But when I went to photograph all the doors, on November 2nd, I found students flowing freely through a door off 11th Ave. And when I continued, I tried the front door on the side the lock isn't on, and it opened.
Condon has an amazing number of doors. I didn't try any of those on its south side that open directly into classrooms. But I did try ten doors, twice, and found three opening once and two opening the other time. Is Condon open or closed, then? I don't know, but on one (locked) door hidden away in the northwest corner, there's a sign that says "This building is locked. Requires key or card access."
Seems to me only two hypotheses are plausible here. One, the people responsible for the signage and locks of Condon Hall's doors are highly incompetent. Or two, Condon Hall is a trap for members of the general public.
For those less risk-averse than I, its hours are weekdays, 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. If they were reliable, those hours would be the longest in West Campus.
Blue - Worry-free public restrooms
Schmitz Hall (Y on map)
Address: 1400 NE Campus Parkway
Named after: Henry Schmitz, 1892-1965
This building, at one end of the skybridge to Central Campus just north of Campus Parkway, is home to the registrar and a whole bunch of enrollment-related administrative offices such as financial aid and admissions. It also has an office with a big window, where "FIUTS" (Foundation for International Understanding through Students) is the middle of three logos on that window, the other two being, if I'm not mistaken, the names of campus political parties of yore; there were people inside that room. And yes, it also has restrooms to whose doors I walked with no hue and cry being raised. Postcard shot:
Its hours are 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays. When I started this project in October, it also had signs announcing hours of 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. weekdays; it was one of the buildings with dueling hours signs. So one of the things I did today was walk through this building at 4:30 P.M. just to make sure the shorter schedule isn't actually in force.
Drama Scene Shop (Z on map)
Address: 3941 University Way NE
This is the odd one out; the other two are very busy buildings, and I can just hear the university's planners saying "Well, if we have to leave any open, it should be those two." But this one isn't busy at all. It's the only open door on its strip; I'm not complaining; but I don't really understand why. The water fountain is quite old-fashioned, and I suspect the restrooms are too. One can see through its windows evidence that it really is what it's called, but I doubt my postcard shot captured that:
Its hours are 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays.
Gould Hall (a on map)
Address: 3950 University Way NE
Named after: Carl Frelinghuysen Gould, 1873-1939
Gould Hall is the home of the College of Built Environments and four of its five departments: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Real Estate and Urban Planning. Also of the Built Environments Library, where today, while waiting to walk through Schmitz Hall, I did a search that turned up the book I'd been looking for about Seattle's "old homeless". One thing Built Environments does well is Web pages, so see this building's Web page. It's one of the places with signage that clearly differentiates between UW-affiliated hours and public hours that I highlighted in the preface to this page. Those public hours are 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays. Its postcard shot:
Dear Diary, there are about as many buildings in the southern half of West Campus, but the majority belong to two apartment complexes and shouldn't need much of my attention. Anyway, I have some more parks of Brooklyn to tell you about first. So I hope there'll be no more such long delays, and hope to see you again tomorrow.
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