Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IIC: Southern West Campus

Dear Diary,

This is a story of vicious crime and moral turpitude.  Depending on whom you believe, I may have broken the law multiple times yesterday by photographing UW buildings' doorways.

First, though, the map.  You may have noticed, dear Diary, that I've been making the maps sort of cumulative.  The parks of Brooklyn, while numerous, just exactly fit into one alphabet, so I've made their map completely cumulative.  The West Campus buildings, on the other hand, are much more numerous, so while the colours and so forth have been adding up, I've had to use three separate alphabets as keys.  But this part is the last - for West Campus - in which I'll need to do that.

I've completed and corrected the depiction of roads named after counties of Washington on this version of the map.  Adams Road NE (where I previously had part of Cowlitz Road) and Adams Lane NE are in a sort of pastel yellow, and NE Pacific St is in a brick red.

Southern West Campus is, over all, the most campus-like of the parts of West Campus.  There's lots of greenery.  Several roads lack both traffic lights and sidewalks, and have little vehicle traffic not moving fast, although Pacific St, in particular, has plenty of lights, sidewalks, and faster vehicles.

OK, now for the true crime story of my evil photography.  The photos for buildings A-C, J and L-O were taken November 3; those for buildings D-I and K were taken yesterday, November 14.  (I also took a few photos for apartment complexes H and I Wednesday, November 9, and a few for buildings D, N and O today.)  They're all in a folder on my Google Drive.

Red - Locked

Child Center Portage Bay (A on map)

Address:  3745 15th Ave NE

The other child care building on West Campus, after Child Center West Campus in the last part.  Of course it's locked.  This one, unlike the university's other child care centers, doesn't seem to have its own playground outdoors; I'm not sure how big it is indoors, because it's basically carved out of another building which I'm treating separately, the Portage Bay Garage (K on the map and below), but it certainly could be big enough to have a playground there.  It's also about a block from each of the four southwestern parks of Brooklyn, one of which presently includes a locked playground.

Washington Sea Grant Program (B on map)

Addresses:  3716 Brooklyn Ave NE and 3710 Brooklyn Ave NE

The office is in 3716 Brooklyn.  It carries an hours sign of weekdays, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., but is locked.  (When I tried the door, back in October, though, this was one of the buildings from which someone came out to ask why I was there.  So someone pays attention to that locked door.)  There are lots of other doors on both buildings which I assume lead to individual grantees, and not restrooms at all; they have no signage of the kinds I looked for, and I tried none of their doors, which I assume are all locked most of the time.

Ocean Research Building (C on map)

Address:  3718 Brooklyn Ave NE

Again, an hours sign saying weekdays, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., on locked doors.  This building is apparently home to the fund-raising office (currently named Advancement Team) of the College of the Environment.

Benjamin D. Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building (D on map)

Address:  616 NE Northlake Place

Named after:  Benjamin Downes Hall, 1932-2019

This is where my infamous career of photography and thumbing my nose at the law was first brought to light.  I started with what I'd considered the building's front door, on Northlake Place.  As I turned toward Pasadena Place, I passed a man with a dolly that had various boxes on it.  He was about my age.  When he saw me, he asked what I was doing there.  I replied that I was taking photos of doorways for my blog, that is, you, dear Diary.  He informed me that photographing UW buildings is against the law.  "Buildings?  From outside?"  "Just look at the website."

(Digression:  Last night I did so.  I couldn't find any such policy.  Maybe I really am eight years old, just as that UW PR guy thought I was, but my birth certificate disagrees with that.)

I replied that I'd been posting such photographs for a week and hadn't heard from any lawyers.  He then left me alone until I'd taken all my photos of the doors in the loading dock, then informed me that I couldn't "go wandering around in here".

Well, he was more or less right about that.  Maybe there is a policy somewhere that says this building's loading dock area is off limits to public pedestrians, though I didn't see a sign there.  But in any event, all the doors are locked.

(Later correction:  Indeed there is a sign, although it's such that only people to whom it doesn't apply are likely to notice it.  The loading dock area is normally held closed by a gate.  A card reader is adjacent to it to open that gate.  And on that card reader it says:

"Not for pedestrians".  That's the gigantic sign that's supposed to tell people not to walk around in the loading dock area.)

I don't know whether that man was a delivery guy or a tenured professor, but I do know that at the University of Washington, interdisciplinary researchers, perhaps to prove they're just as good as the more common intradisciplinary kind, don't want the public visiting.  In particular, there isn't even an hours sign, except the one at the loading dock for delivery guys.

Optical Remote Sensing Laboratory (E on map)

Address:  668 NE Northlake Way

I was wrong, dear Diary, in the preface to this page.  UW doesn't have a wind tunnel.  It has the one I knew about and also the one in this building, which makes at least two.  This building isn't mapped as part of West Campus but south of it, and is privately owned and pays property taxes.  It doesn't have any door signage at all.

Publication Services Building (F on map)

Address:  3900 7th Ave NE

This building actually hosts a variety of operations, notably UW Recycling and something managementy called UW Lean.  But it's primarily about pieces of paper.  Someone has bindery equipment there; "Creative Communications", an important part of UW marketing, is there; and "Mailing Services" is there.  Unsurprisingly, every locked door carries the same slogan:

"Building for Official University Use Only".

Northlake Building (G on map)

Address:  814 NE Northlake Place

This building belongs to Facilities Services, specifically the Building Services and Custodial Services parts of it, although the Applied Physics Laboratory has some space and its own door there.  Again, no surprise that it's locked.

Mercer Court (H on map)

Addresses:  3925 Adams Lane NE and 3927 Adams Lane NE

Named after:  Asa Shinn Mercer, 1839-1917

This apartment complex houses both undergraduates (in buildings A through C) and graduate students (in buildings D and E), mostly in multi-person apartments; I don't understand the lease terms of this complex or the next one.  We've already encountered Mercer Court's surroundings as a branch of the UW Farm, which has its "clubhouse" on E's bottom floor.  Other things multiple buildings have include bike storage space and music practice rooms.  Only building A, on the north, has the kind of ground-floor retail found in the dormitories proper further north:  it has a currently closed branch of the same Husky Grind café as is open in Alder Hall up there. [1]  It also has a "Graduate Student Learning Center", open only to graduate students.

I photographed the doorway of one of the music rooms.  My phone did the thing it sometimes does of presenting red as green.  The rooms are in fact locked, with red lights on their card readers.

[1] One thing that annoys me about these closed sites is that they all have signs in their doors saying they'll be re-opened in phases during the 2021-2022 academic year.  Can't anyone even bother to open the doors and change the signs once per year?  What if there were a gas leak in the interim?

Stevens Court (I on map)

Address:  3801 Brooklyn Ave NE

Named after:  Isaac Ingalls Stevens, 1818-1862

Stevens Court, whose apartments are open to both undergraduates and graduate students, is very unlike the relatively high-rise dorms and apartment buildings elsewhere in West Campus.  Each unit appears to have its own entrance from the outside, up a stairway as necessary.  The surroundings are rustic rather than paved (or farmed).

That doesn't mean Stevens Court is free from the fear that's inculcated into West Campus residents.  Far from it.  I found a poster area that had not only the "Safety" poster I abused in the previous part, but also this:

Housing and Food Services at least had the decency to put "Get to know your neighbors" first, but 2nd and 3rd reiterate the equation of non-university people with Bad Things.

Anyway, what with all the rusticity, Stevens Court doesn't have ground floor common areas.  Instead it has building H, which appears to be entirely common areas.  (It's the small building toward the east side of the court.)  Interestingly, a lounge in building H appears to be open to some conference attendees, who are admonished similarly to how more lastingly homeless people are:

But the evidence that I really am a hardened criminal came a little later in my photos:

"Use of the outdoor areas of this apartment community are [sic] restricted to residents and authorized personnel."  I bet the guy I met at Benjamin D. Hall wishes such a sign applied to the Pasadena Place sidewalk, too!  Anyway, it's a good thing I decided the Stevens Court courtyard doesn't need to be mentioned as a park, since it's apparently yet another university space from which the public is barred, in words and perhaps sometimes in deeds.

Orange - Unlocked, but no public restrooms

Agua Verde Building (J on map)

Address:  1303 NE Boat St

This building holds the Agua Verde Paddle Club and the Agua Verde Café.  It does not, however, as I already pointed out in this page's preface, hold any public restrooms.

Portage Bay Garage (K on map)

Address:  3740 Brooklyn Ave NE

Um, duh, it's a garage.  I didn't actually investigate this building even closely enough to figure out how much of it the Child Center Portage Bay (A on the map and above) occupies, certainly not closely enough to say whether it includes public restrooms, but really, what are the odds?  In any event, visitors are strongly (though not at all clearly) warned off:

Green - All good except we aren't wanted

This is as high as the buildings of southern West Campus go, dear Diary.  There are no postcard shots of buildings brave enough to admit the public in this part.  These buildings all appear to belong to the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, part of the College of the Environment; beyond that, I have only limited information on which buildings hold what.  (Locked buildings B and C above probably have the same ownership.)

Fisheries Research and Teaching Building (L on map)

Address:  1140 NE Boat St

I found one of the four doorways of this building without the sign "This building is open to University of Washington students, faculty, staff, and invited guests only."  Its posted hours are 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays.

Marine Studies Building (M on map)

Address:  3707 Brooklyn Ave NE

I found one of the four doorways of this building with that sign.  On my first survey of this area in October, I also found a sign at that door saying the restrooms were out of order.  Now, without that additional sign, somewhat trap-like.  Hours, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays.

John M. Wallace Hall (N on map)

Address:  3737 Brooklyn Ave NE

Named after:  John Michael Wallace, known as Mike, born in 1940

For this building, I do know of some specific tenants.  The Climate Impacts Group is here, as is the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies, and also the Program in Environmental Studies of the College of the Environment.  The building's hours are 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays.  And the public isn't wanted; it says so, clearly, on each doorway.

Now, this is only to be expected.  After all, Seattle routinely - practically every month - churns up violent mobs howling for the blood of climatologists, right?

What's that you say?  We don't?  Gosh, then I wonder why the building isn't open to the public.  I wonder if the weird phrasing offers a clue.  "Building Restricted to U of W Faculty, Staff, Students and Authorized Account Holders".  For whom does the climate authorise accounts?  Furthermore, at least two of the doors have card readers, which I found green.  Wouldn't it be more effective protection for our desperately needed climatologists if the card readers were active?

Curiously, this building used to be the Academic Computing Center.  That's still its acronym-like code, ACC.  I dare say that in fact, the building used not to be open to people who couldn't use the computers there, and those signs have just been preserved in the building's new existence because it's always wasteful to throw away a sign that says "No public restrooms".  After all, think of all the children in Third World countries who grow all the way to adulthood without a "No Public Restrooms" sign of their very own!

That would also help explain why Wallace Hall has other sorts of signs.

I mean, if it's wasteful to throw away a decades-old sign, how could it not be wasteful to throw away one that's just a year or two old?  So at Wallace Hall, again at all three doors, COVID-19 is still governing building hours.

Nevertheless:  Which is it?  If a homeless man is observed wandering in and using the restroom during the hours that outdated sign advertises, without causing any other trouble, should he be prosecuted for it or shouldn't he?

I'm not sure how much Wallace Hall is a trap, how much it's just a museum.

Fishery Sciences Building

I am, however, absolutely certain that this building is a trap.  I don't know how often it snaps shut.  There was an event of some kind being prepared for when I visited on November 3rd; perhaps all the attendees were invited, and so were allowed to be in the building.  It's possible that I no longer get smelly and dirty enough to spring the trap myself, housed as I currently am.  But it's still a trap.

My evidence?  Well, Fishery Sciences has a lot of doors.  There are four on its south wall, in a row 12 34 two double doors.  There are eight on its southern east wall, strung 12  3  4  5  6  78, with double doors at the south and the north ends.  There's one on its northern east wall.  And there are at least three, depending what one counts as a door (here I mean one with a means of entrance), within the loading dock area on its west wall.

Fishery Sciences' hours are posted as 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays.

I tried every door around 4:30 P.M. today.  Here's what I found:

Here's what the signage on each door suggested I might have found:

Here's some signage from the northernmost double door:

"Welcome to Fishery Sciences".  And here's some from the loading dock door:

"This building is open to University of Washington students, faculty, staff and invited guests only."

Essentially, Fishery Sciences hides its warnings that it isn't open to the public on its loading dock and in an entrance hidden by shrubbery, meanwhile putting signs literally saying "Welcome" on its front doors.  And then it unlocks nearly all the doors, regardless of their signage.  "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence", it's said.  I'd like to know by what incompetence this state of affairs could come into existence.  It looks to me like a baited trap.

I'm sorry, dear Diary.  This structure for these parts is supposed to lead to happy endings, but it can't when there simply isn't anything happy to report.  Anyway, this is all for today, but I'm already ready tomorrow to write about the last four parks of Brooklyn.  Then the day after, I expect to sum up West Campus building hours.  From there, I'm not sure.  November 29th, I have to return SPL's copy of Lezlie Lowe's No Place to Go; there's a lot of work to do to re-start the downtown series, but that's one deadline for that work.  It's a bad idea to try to finish the academic libraries later than Thanksgiving, and I haven't even worked on them for over a week.  I also haven't watched any Korean dramas for months, and want to change that; and although the increasing certainty of a recession makes me increasingly certain that it's futile, I should also at least try to look for work.  So although I still expect to spend Thanksgiving weekend photographing the Central Campus parks (assuming it's legal to do so at that time), I'm not sure when I'll get back to UW otherwise.  I'll be astonished if the need to do so goes away in the next months.

But for now, good night, and I expect to see you tomorrow, dear Diary.