Seattle Parks Is Trying to Tell the Truth. Will I Survive the Shock?

Dear Diary,

I have a notion that being an inveterate liar is kind of like other moral failings, and so although lying has never been an important sin to me, I can figure out what it's like by analogy.  I think there are two ways to try to stop sinning in general, and so lying in particular.  One is the folk wisdom that a sinner has to "hit bottom", get to where confessing and giving up the sin is the only way forward.  But the other is to work on one's personality and one's reality until giving up the sin won't hurt so much.  In this particular case, until lying is no longer needed.  That path, which is if anything harder than hitting bottom and making other people responsible for dealing with it, is the path it seems to me the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has chosen.

I pointed out a number of ludicrous details in the department's new "dashboard" (a word I kind of wish had died of COVID-19 toward the end of the pandemic, but still, that's what it's called).  It said Cowen Park's restrooms, which had been damaged by early opening in March 2022 and hadn't re-opened since, were open.  It said Ravenna Park's lower pair of restrooms, which have been perennial targets of vandals, and where the men's room hadn't opened at all in 2022, were both open.  And to top this series of obvious whoppers off, it said University Playground's restrooms, which hadn't been opened by parks department employees at any time since before the pandemic started, were both open.

I recently learnt that I wasn't quite as poor as I thought I was, because my bank hadn't charged a fee I'd expected them to charge.  So today I splurged on a newspaper and went hiking, prepared to mock yet another parks department lying map afterward.

I found both of Cowen Park's restrooms open today.

I found all four of Ravenna Park's restrooms open today.

I didn't find either of University Playground's restrooms open today, but a small group of homeless people there told me that was because they'd been locked half an hour earlier.  Considering that it was 5:41 P.M. when I was told this, that's testimony to way too early closing, but still, sadly, believable.  Supporting this preposterous turn of events actually having happened, the restroom doors both had new handles (dear Diary, your readers can, if they wish, compare the handle shown here to those in previous photos via the tags at the bottom of the page, or directly here if reading on cell phones, which didn't offer those tags the last time I looked.)

Notice, dear Diary, that these handles are set into circular supports; the previous handles, which were blocky rather than delicate themselves, weren't set into anything like that.  I think the evidence is good that University Playground's restrooms have finally re-opened.

So the parks department has done the hard work to justify its claims regarding all the restrooms I visited today.  Including those at Burke-Gilman Playground Park.  Now, this is where Google Maps lied to me today; it claims the whole park is temporarily closed.  

 

But actually, well, let's see if I can do this:

(I was trying to just paste a print-screen from OpenStreetMap into the page.  No, I couldn't.  Darn.)  Only part of the park is closed, the northeastern part.  The parks department also tells the truth about this:

And someone carefully removed the sign adjacent to the Burke-Gilman Trail there pointing the way to the restrooms.

 

Yes, dear Diary, they're building new restrooms there.  I hope this time they're winter-proof, but I sure hope, if I become homeless again before winter and there's another pandemic, they finish quickly.

I remembered from long ago that the neatest thing I thought Burke-Gilman Playground Park had to offer was a play fortress thingy sort of at the northwestern corner of the northeastern part of the park.  So I looked in its direction from the street, but couldn't tell whether it'd been protected or not.  (I'm more pessimistic that the actually neater sundial, also mentioned in that page, could've stayed in situ and been safe, so I hope it was moved.)  The building all that landscape destruction is in aid of is still standing, but perhaps so far all they've had time to do is pull the plumbing out.  (In the photo I uploaded to Google Drive, at full size a viewer can see the holes where the water fountain was attached.)

Anyway, my point is, that this morning when I checked the dashboard again hoping they'd have stopped, as I thought, lying and I could do other stuff today, they showed a bunch of restrooms as closed due to "Capital Project"s, and this was one of them.

Their water fountain map is still way too optimistic, I suspect; it's now up to 5 off, 206 on.  I found three off today, but one isn't theirs; it's the one where University Methodist Temple used to be, the stone edifice of the water fountain (not the church) still standing, but with no plumbing left inside.  I've reported the "lower" Ravenna Park fountain using "Find It - Fix It", which is how they say they want updates to those maps.  I haven't reported yet the weird stone water fountain pretty far southwest in Laurelhurst Playfield.  I guess I'll see what happens to the water fountain map tomorrow, when I plan to hide from the rain, having already lost my umbrella this year.

The Seattle Times, whose weather forecaster likes to go to extremes, is currently predicting lows for the weekend of 33º Friday night, 32º Saturday night, and 34º Sunday night.  Usually the parks department has been able to shrug off October freezes, but if the Times's extremism comes true (as it does depressingly often), that may be a too long-lasting example for the same reaction.   No official word yet, but my point, dear Diary, is that as usual, I've left it too late to get every park visited before it all changes.  The questions is whether it matters.  Is the parks department really turning over a new leaf?  Will it, for example, admit what's happening when it closes the majority of its restrooms for the winter?  Or is this just another episode in a longer battle?

One reason I've been paying so much attention to libraries lately, dear Diary, is to have another string to your bow as well as my own.  I think the last thing I expected was to have the parks department remove your raison d'être, but if it happens, it happens.  I will admit, I found myself getting both reminiscent and bored today as I took all these photos; I really didn't want, in particular, to get the only newspaper I can probably afford soon wet by photographing water fountains.  (And Jenny Durkan is no longer in office, so need I really worry about another Durkan Drought?  Well, only if there's another pandemic...)

Anyway, photos other than the above (most of those above are actually not at these links):

Cowen Park

Ravenna Park

Burke-Gilman Trail, 30th Ave fountain

Burke-Gilman Playground Park (including none of the photos above, only the photo that sort of shows where the water fountain was)

Laurelhurst Community Center (restrooms) and Playfield (water fountains)

Burke-Gilman Trail, 47th St fountain

Former University Methodist Church, former street fountain

Christie Park

University Playground (including the photo above)

Time marches on, dear Diary; there's a reason I ditched "months" in the titles of the library pages.  I'm working on three fronts:

For part VI of public library hours, I've finished work on Wahkiakum County and started on revising the actual page and on San Juan County.  Cowlitz County, however, is nearly three times as big a job as those two put together, and Skagit County nearly four times.  So we'll see.

For part II of institutional libraries, I now have my list and just need to get through it; as I said in part I, it's a long list.

And I'm also dipping my toes into part I of academic libraries.

Whatever, though, you should hear from me again reasonably soon, dear Diary.  Happy nights and days until then.

Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IID: West, summary and prospects

Dear Diary,

It isn't easy to count the University of Washington's buildings, because one has first to define what one means by a building.  For present purposes, let's pretend that I visited 61 buildings in UW's West Campus and north and south of there, in the area from I-5 to 15th Ave NE and from the water to NE 45th St that I'm calling Brooklyn (well, OK, four are actually north of 45th).  This is more than I expect to list in East or South campuses, and is well over half the number in Central Campus.

Unlike Central Campus, but like the other two, very few of these buildings, most of which are publicly owned, are open to the public.  And fewer still offer public restrooms.  I don't need a whole alphabet for them.  And I don't really need another map for them, although this part includes both building and park maps anyway for completeness's sake.

The present

Here are the buildings that offer publicly reachable restrooms in this area, with the best information available to me about their hours:

• Hours not posted:
  1. University of Washington Medical Center Roosevelt Building 2 - 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays [1]
  2. University of Washington Police Building - 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. weekdays
• Posted against the public:
  3. Social Work Building (southern half) - 7:30 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays
  4. Condon Hall - 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays, if one can find an unlocked door
     
  5. Fishery Sciences Building - 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays
  6. Fisheries Research and Teaching Building - 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays
  7. Marine Studies Building - 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays
  8. John M. Wallace Hall - 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays
• Public restrooms with clear hours:
  9. University Book Store - 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays through Saturdays, noon to 4 P.M. Sundays
  10. Schmitz Hall - 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays
  11. Drama Scene Shop - 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays
  12. Gould Hall - 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays
      

[1] - I clicked through 24 Web pages of clinics at UWMC - Roosevelt. The Exercise Training Center is open until 6 P.M., and the Spine Center and the Dermatologic Surgery Center open at 7 A.M.  The last-named is in Building 1, which doesn't have public restrooms, but the other two are in Building 2, which does.

Did you notice something, dear Diary?  Weekend hours are only at the Book Store.  And there are no evening hours, nothing after 6 P.M.

I wasn't familiar with most of these buildings before the lockdown, and not all of their previous hours are documented online (for example, the UW's pages for classroom buildings, such as Condon Hall, have never included hours).  But let's see how many are documented.  I already referred to the Book Store's mildly longer hours, three parts back.  The Exercise Training Center in UWMC-Roosevelt building 2 is recorded to have been open until 7:30 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays as recently as December 2019.  The UW Police Building's hours aren't much changed from January 2020.  The Built Environments Library in Gould Hall used to be open until 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, and 1 to 5 P.M. weekends, as I noted in the academic libraries page.  A 1999 UW Daily article ("updated" in 2015) gives the same hours for Schmitz Hall as it's keeping now.

Let's also look at the nature of the obstacles.  At the Social Work Building and John M. Wallace Hall, signs on durable materials announce the public's unwelcome, although in each case signs on paper suggest otherwise.  At the other buildings, the barring signs are themselves on paper.  None of these buildings have the kind of painted-on-glass "Public Keep Out" notices common at the West Campus dorms.

So my best guess is that West Campus and its northern environs have never really been a good place for a homeless person to try to spend a rainy day, but have probably gotten somewhat worse since the pandemic.

I also don't know how long UW has been lecturing the residents of West Campus that they should fear their non-UW neighbours.   All those painted-on "Keep Out" notices suggest this pattern is longstanding.  At least one person other than me who disagrees with the message has been on West Campus recently, though:

The future

The day I photographed those posters (but didn't see, haven't seen, at all the one that seems to have fallen from the top), I also (well, that evening) photographed another poster, on 15th Ave somewhere south of Campus Parkway:

"Be a World of Good".  Comparable ambition to the previous slogan, "Be Boundless"; but decidedly more interested in generosity.

I was born to a geneticist and raised by her and my father, who, I've already told you, dear Diary, was an epidemiologist.  I grew up two blocks from a university library, and used to stay there past my bedtime.  The years I was homeless here are hardly the only years I've spent largely in university libraries.  I'm not trying to grind an anti-intellectual axe here.  It's just that I consider myself capable, given the atmosphere in which I grew up and have lived, of distinguishing a university's good deeds from its less good (let alone its evil) ones.

While looking for a name for what I eventually called the Fishery Sciences Courtyard, I came across a reference to it in the previously mentioned environmental impact statement for the UW's current Seattle Campus Master Plan (327-page PDF).  This eventually led me to a whole page of planning documents.  And one thing that's really up front in those documents is that the UW expects to build a lot in the next decade or so, and fully half of that building is planned for the West Campus.

Part of what that's about is that the UW is planning, although not in a rush, to get rid of most of its surface parking lots.  (The current occupation of lot W35 by the Haring Center's school can be seen as a trial run for this.)  Much of the Seattle campus is given to such lots, so that gives it lots of room to build.  I expect many of the buildings will include underground parking, but also, it turns out UW is subject to a cap on certain categories of parking.  See, the Master Plan is actually an agreement between the university and the City of Seattle, and one component of that agreement for some time now has been this cap.  And this time, the cap is being lowered, from 12,000 to 9,000 spaces.

So that's some of it, but there are much bigger surface parking lots in Central and East campuses than anywhere in West Campus.  The main thing is that the university has asked for, and been given, much higher height limits on much of West Campus than it had hitherto obeyed.  I mentioned that many of the buildings of West Campus weren't originally built for or by the university; they're also rather short, as are many of the buildings further north, outside the Master Plan's boundary.  So the UW can solve two problems at one stroke by tearing those inherited buildings down; it can get purpose-built university buildings, and it can get them taller.

Of the buildings I've discussed, Schmitz Hall, the Transportation Services Building, Condon Hall, Henderson Hall, the Child Center West Campus, the Southwest Maintenance Building, the Brooklyn Trail Building, the Ethnic Cultural Center Theatre, the Community Design Center, the Drama Scene Shop, the unnamed buildings at 3935 and 3939 University Way, the Purchasing and Accounting Building, the UW Lock Shop, the Northlake Building, Stevens Court, John M. Wallace Hall, the Fishery Teaching and Research Building, the Marine Studies Building, the Portage Bay Garage, the Child Center Portage Bay, the Ocean Research Building, and the Washington Sea Grant Program buildings are all candidates for demolition.  24 of the 61.

Also, the following parks I've described to you, dear Diary, will be affected by this plan.  H (805 NE Northlake Place), O07 (another landscaped area near the University Bridge head), R (Transportation Services Building Courtyard), T (Condon Hall Courtyard), and V (Child Center West Campus playgrounds) are all candidates to be built over.  N (Burke-Gilman Trail under the University Bridge), Q (Gould Park), Y (Fishery Science Building Courtyard), and Z (Burke-Gilman Trail near Brooklyn Ave) are all to be expanded, but are likely to change significantly in the process.  This is why I don't know, in particular, whether Tikvah's Garden will survive, to whatever extent it survives now.  It's to become part of what the Master Plan sees as the first really good West Campus park, the West Campus Green.  (Sakuma Viewpoint is perennially tugged between West and South campuses, so doesn't count.  Of course, the block the West Campus Green is to be on, the Fishery Science block, is also perennially tugged between those, but maybe a little less so.)

The UW also agreed to a cap on construction.  That's what the 50% refers to.  It gets to do net 6,000,000 new gross square feet of construction, and has agreed that 3,000,000 of those should be in West Campus.  The Master Plan itself insists that much of what a university does not only is inscrutable, but shouldn't be scrutinised at all.  So it doesn't say much about in what order this very tall order should be executed.  However, a different document, the 2018 West Campus Guidelines (95-page PDF), provides some hints.  On its page 73 is a map, distinguishing two ten-year tiers for the work (five buildings in the first tier), and also giving what sure looks like an exact order for the buildings to be built.  The Master Plan is of course correct that the university isn't committed to any particular order, but I suspect that left to its own devices, page 73 shows what it thinks might work best.

The building marked 1 on that map is the one to go in the southern half of the block between 40th St, University Way, the Burke-Gilman Trail, and Brooklyn Ave.  At this time that half-block is occupied by the Purchasing and Accounting Building (all of whose departments are still working from home), parking lot W12, and the UW Lock Shop, which is preparing to move:

I think it's a reasonably good bet that that building, labelled W27 (but a building, not a parking lot) on the map, really will be first.

And that triggers something else.  On page 240 of the Master Plan, we find what looks very like contract language:

Over the life of this CMP, the approximately
4-acre area designated as the “West Campus
Green” shall be reserved for open space,
except that minor structures supporting
the open space function are allowed.
Structures and improvements required for
utility infrastructure are also allowed. A
design and implementation plan for West
Campus Green and West Campus section
of the continuous waterfront trail shall be
completed by the earlier of: the time 1.5
million square feet of net new development
in West Campus sector is completed; or the
time the University submits its first permit
application for development of Site W27, W29,
W33, W34, or W35. A concept plan for all
three sections of the continuous waterfront
trail—West, South, and East—shall also be
completed by that time. The concept plan
for the continuous waterfront trail shall be
reviewed by SDCI for compliance with the
City’s Shoreline Management Master Program
and the University’s Shoreline Public Access
Plan. The continuous waterfront trail design
and implementation plan for the South and
East campus sectors shall include convenient
pickup and drop off facilities and signage
throughout the length of the trail that reflects
local Native American history. Construction
of the West Campus Green and the West
Campus section of the continuous waterfront
trail shall occur by the earlier of: completion
of 3.0 million gross square feet of net new
development in the West Campus sector; at
the completion of adjacent development sites
W29, W33, and W34; or the exhaustion of the
6 million gross square feet growth allowance.
In addition, as the University completes
development of Site W29, it shall complete
the “Plaza,” and as the University completes
development of Site W27, it shall complete the
“Belvedere,” both identified on page 98.

So basically, if the UW does start its West Campus remodelling at W27, it will deliberately be triggering various deadlines related to public open space.  (However, the first building in the numbered sequence to trigger the West Campus Green actually being built, which entails demolishing three not so very old, purpose-built buildings, is #5, W33.  So they aren't planning to force themselves to make that happen very soon.  Buildings 2-4 are between 40th St, University, the BGT, and 11th Ave.)

The Master Plan also promises that a whole lot of the new buildings will have "active edges".  Turns out an active edge can be almost anything - a classroom, for example.  But not an office.  So this isn't an outright promise that the university will have ground floor retail open to the public, say, let alone public restrooms, in the new buildings; but that's certainly the impression the more marketing-ish of the pages of the Master Plan try to convey.

Which brings me back to "Be a World of Good".  Which is the better deed?  To offer a bunch of parks, of which the West Campus Green is strongly hinted to get the park restrooms Fritz Hedges Waterway Park across the street didn't get [1], and then lock all the other doors?  Or to live up to the claims for "innovation" and "diversity" the Master Plan is full of, and reverse the recent trend of enforcing separation between town and gown with card readers?  I don't think the university, given the direction it's currently going, is even trying to live up to the spirit the Master Plan calls for, and sooner or later it's going to have to decide whether indulging fear is really the best it can do.

[1] Now we have a better reason than sloth or penury for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's refusal to build restrooms at Fritz Hedges.  Future restrooms that someone else will pay for are always better than present ones that people can actually use.

The past

I plan, dear Diary, to publicise this part a little bit.  So I thought it would be helpful if I concluded it with references to the previous parts, both on the buildings of and near West Campus, and on the parks of Brooklyn.

"Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus":

• Part I, Preface
• Part IIA, North of West Campus (actually, north of 41st St)
  
• Part IIB, Northern West Campus (41st St to the Burke-Gilman Trail)
  
• Part IIC, Southern West Campus (south of the Burke-Gilman Trail)
  

The final map:

 

"Six Hikes in Brooklyn":

• Part I, Northwest (parks A-C)
  
• Part II, West (parks D-G)
  
• Part III, Southwest (parks H-M)
  
• Part IV, Centre (parks N-P)
  
• Part V, East (parks Q-V)
  
• Part VI, Southeast (parks W-Z)
  

The final map:

Also relevant:  "Academic Library Hours One Year Later, part I:  Public universities".

Dear Diary, in the next week I really should finish with the academic libraries, as well as start a really long Korean drama and look for work.  So you probably won't hear much from me until I finish at least one part of the academic libraries remaining.  Happy days and nights until then.

 

Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IIB: Northern West Campus

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.

Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IIA: North of West Campus

Dear Diary,

Two days ago, on November 1st, I went back to what turn out to be nineteen total buildings shown on the University of Washington's official map as between NE 41st and 47th Streets and 9th and 15th Avenues NE.  The southernmost four of these buildings are surrounded, on the map, by colouring that implies that they're considered part of West Campus; the rest aren't.  But all of these buildings have in common that they're north of places that are certainly parts of West Campus.

West Campus in general is the most urban part of the UW's Seattle campus.  It has, for example, more traffic lights than the other three parts put together.  This area, not belonging to West Campus proper (except those four buildings, or anyway two half-blocks), is the most urban part even of West Campus.  There are no roads here named by the university, all the streets have sidewalks, and drivers on those streets, assuming pedestrians will stay on those sidewalks, drive at normal speeds.  None of the areas I consider park-like, in the U-District, are here.  (To be fair, Christie Park, a genuine City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation park with a water fountain, is just the other side of 9th Ave.  And good news:  today I passed that park, and found its water fountain still running.)

Here's a map:

Conveniently, this initial map includes all five of the broad categories into which I'm putting the buildings:

1. Red is for buildings whose front doors I couldn't open during business hours (and also during their posted hours, if they have any).
2. Orange is for buildings whose front doors open, but which don't offer restrooms to the public, for whatever reason.
3. Yellow is for buildings whose front doors open, which do have restrooms available to the public, but whose hours are problematic, making people who enter unreasonably vulnerable to trespassing protocols.
4. Green is for buildings whose front doors open, which do have restrooms available to the public, whose hours are clear, but which have notices saying the public isn't welcome there, again making people who enter unreasonably vulnerable to trespassing protocols.
5. And blue is for buildings whose front doors open, which do have restrooms available to the public, whose hours are clear, and which don't have notices saying the public isn't welcome there.

Another way this area is unusual, by UW's Seattle campus standards, is that the UW doesn't own all these buildings.  More precisely, seven of them are subject to property tax (unlike most university buildings) according to the King County Parcel Viewer.  The map shows those buildings with a grey fill; I also identify them in the building by building treatment below.

Most of these buildings, indeed most of those on campus as well, have names; I also give their street addresses.

My specific purpose two days ago was to photograph all of the doors that have what I consider useful signage, for each building.  I'd been scattershot both in photography and in checking all doors to a building.  Part I of this page, the preface, includes a photo meant to demonstrate dueling hours signs; I was surprised that it also demonstrated a no-trespassing sign.  So I thought I had to up my game.  But I have no intention of wasting Blogspot's resources on all these photos, and have instead put them into a folder in my Google Drive account.

Red - Locked

CoMotion Innovation Center (A on map)

Address:  4545 Roosevelt Way NE

This is part of a building that occupies much of the block, and I'm guessing UW leases the space; at any rate, its owner pays property tax on it.  Hours of 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays are on the door, but it didn't open to me on any visit.  I don't know that this building actually has a name, let alone this name, but CoMotion, the university's technology transfer arm, calls its ground-floor space the name I used above.

Roosevelt Commons West (B on map)

Address:  4300 Roosevelt Way NE

According to the parcel viewer, this building, whose owner pays property tax on it, involves "Seattle Childrens & UW".  I've been going through UW's online office directory, so far only superficially and only through the letter E, and it's obvious already that UW occupies much of this building, mainly with back-office administrative stuff, although I wonder at the Disability Service Office being there.

I wonder because the building has a mostly locked door.  To be more exact, there's a security desk just past the door, and both times I've visited, the same guy has been at it.  The first time, I found it locked, but he came out, asked what I was doing there, and when I explained, told me this was private property that the university just rented space in.  The second time, two days ago, I found it open, but that was right after a couple of people had walked blithely through it; once he noticed me, the guard locked it from his desk.

So yeah, I find it strange for that office to be behind a barrier, even one as discerning as that guard seems to be.

University District Building (C on map)

Address:  1107 NE 45th St

This is definitely a privately owned building the university just rents space in.  Its uses, and those of others, for the building seem to be mostly medical.  Again, there's a security guard; I'm not sure I met the same guy both times, but the second time, at least, he was pretty friendly.

I'm not sure how much longer he'll be friendly, though, because on some schedule or other - the notices don't say - the building will apparently be torn down:

45th Street Plaza (D on map)

Address:  1100 NE 45th St

This building, according to the parcel viewer, is still owned by its developer, but pays no property tax, and UW is the main tenant.  It's used by a bunch of medical programs, including the recently famous Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, as well as at least one office dedicated to making grants to such programs.  Whatever door those folks use to come into the building, though, I didn't find; all I found was a door with a peculiar warning on it:

"DO NOT tug on handles!  Door will LOCK!"  Um, OK.  I'll try to remember just to wiggle my ears to make it open, then.

UW Tower, Building S (E on map)

Address:  4333 Brooklyn Ave NE

This is the new home of the University of Washington Alumni Association.  The four buildings of the UW Tower used to be Safeco Insurance's headquarters, if you remember them, dear Diary, from the private libraries?  I only found three entrances to those buildings.  Of those, this is the one that's locked, which makes the association's bragging about what's behind the door grate a little.

Maps say there's one more entrance, from the garages between the UW Tower complex and the University District Building.

Anyway, this is the first building in this part with a warning of a kind a whole lot of UW buildings carry:

In this case, it reads "Only UW students, staff, faculty, and other invited guests are authorized to enter."

Arcade Building (F on map)

Address:  4518 University Way NE

This privately owned, property tax paying site houses KUOW and the Organization of Student Social Workers.  Maybe more.

Alumni House (G on map)

Address:  1415 NE 45th St

This is the Alumni Association's old home.  I wonder whether it ever was actually open to alumni, who were encouraged to think of it as a sort of house away from home, or whether the building name was cynically given from the start.  Anyway, now it houses a human-computer interaction + design studio, whatever that means; a graduate program in Museology; and the U-District Partnership whose informational signage I mocked a few pages back.

Eagleson Hall (H on map)

Address:  1417 NE 42nd St

Named after:  James Mills Eagleson, known as Jimmy, 1894-1919.

This is the first of the four buildings in this part which the university maps as part of West Campus.  It's home to the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences.  Most of the signage is about what people looking for the Speech and Hearing Clinic should do, but there are also hours posted, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. Monday through Friday.  That doesn't mean it's unlocked, though.

Cedar Apartments East (I on map)

Address:  1128 NE 41st St

I needn't, it turns out, have been as worried about being near the residential buildings as touring the "north campus" ones on a dry evening had made me.  During the day they aren't thronged, and it's easy to see that at least the west campus buildings all have locked doors.  (I didn't try each one, indeed I'm not sure I tried any.  Card readers blinking red next to each settled me in the certainty that they were, in fact, locked.)  This one, apparently technically part of West Campus but north of most other campus buildings, also has one version of the sign I wasn't sure all residential buildings have.  I've now seen a lot of this version:

"Only residents, staff, faculty and other invited guests are authorized to enter."

Cedar Apartments West (J on map)

Address:  1112 NE 41st St

Very similar signage.

I found a young man lying on the pavement just north of this building.  I couldn't tell from his clothes whether he was a student or not, but figured the odds of his being homeless weren't high.  On my first visit, I simply verified he was breathing and went on my way, but I came back when done with the day's work, about an hour later, near 6 P.M., tried to wake him, pointed out that the sun was setting and lying there as he was would become dangerous pretty soon, and left him mumbling sleepily and not stirring.  In this nine-month lease "apartment" building, most of the apartments apparently house four students in separate rooms.  The windows show a little bit of evidence that the staff try to gin up some building "spirit", but not much evidence, and the fact that this guy could lie neglected there for an hour suggests the residents aren't listening to such spirit talk all that carefully.

Jack Straw Cultural Center

Address:  909 NE 43rd St

Named after:  Jack Straw, who may have died in 1381.

I owe this private, property tax-paying, building something of an apology for how I discussed it in connection with the parks of this area.

My posture throughout this project has been that I'm too much of a moron to do anything, when presented with a door, other than try to open it.  That I'm too desperate to find a restroom to do anything like call a phone number.

Well, given that I've now made the decision to put more time into these buildings, I decided to try pushing the button they ask visitors to push.

I heard a dial tone and ringing, and figured the next step would be a conversation ending with "No public restrooms".  But actually, the next step was a buzz, and I had to fumble with picking up my stuff, putting my mask on, and holding the door open all at the same time.  Once I was inside, though, and more or less put together again, nobody paid me the least mind as I walked through, easily found an old-fashioned water fountain and two gendered restrooms, and walked out again.

As a UW building, it's still locked.  The upper-floor tenants, including the Innovative Programs Research Group of the UW's School of Social Work, use the back door, which has no buzzer.  And unlike the Foundation for International Understanding through Students, which has moved from its prominent location in the Husky Union Building to this backwater, and therefore has festooned its name and instructions for reaching it all over both doorways - well, the IPRG, whose main current gig is apparently helping keep teenagers away from marijuana, apparently prefers the peace and quiet of anonymity.

Jack Straw Cultural Center, however, as a private building, appears to be more or less really open.  I wavered over which buildings in this part would get the kinds of postcard shots I gave all the restroom buildings in a previous hike of North Seattle.  Because this one doesn't offer building hours either on its door or at its website, when posted building hours are one of the things I'm making a big deal about, I don't think I can show you my postcard shot of it, dear Diary, but here's its current show.  The show is by appointment, but it turns out that isn't just (if at all) to keep out the riffraff, but because the show is largely sonic (as is Jack Straw's work in general), and needs attention to make it work.

Orange - Unlocked, but No Public Restrooms

Maybe I should clarify, dear Diary.  I think "No public restrooms" is a meme that probably originated from genuine horror stories, but is now carried along not by additional horrors year by year, but by its own dominance.  But that doesn't change the fact that many people are devoted to this meme.  So I'm not distinguishing here between existence barriers (some buildings at the UW really don't have restrooms, but that's highly unlikely to be an issue in this bunch), physical barriers (as at UW Tower below) and social ones.  As long as a building is presented as offering no public restrooms, it belongs in this category.

Roosevelt Commons East (L on map)

Address:  4311 11th Ave NE

The ground-floor tenant of this building is the UW's Continuum College, which is apparently what the UW Extension, for which I came here, and from which I took courses in 2006 and 2008-2009, has morphed into.  When I entered, in some wonder at finding an unlocked door, it was a Continuum College staffer who informed me there are no public restrooms.

UW Tower, building T (M on map)

Address:  4333 Brooklyn Ave NE

The two doors I found in this block that were unlocked both lead to the same lobby, whose central feature is a bank of turnstiles run by card readers.  The northern entrance passes a security desk whose occupants, the first time I visited, paid me no mind, plus signage I read which clarifies that only a select few are allowed to be in the building at all.  The southern entrance is much more pleasant, passing some plants and art.  But anyway, there are no restrooms in that lobby, and I'm pretty sure those security guards would be all over any turnstile-jumper, if someone who needed a restroom that badly were physically up to jumping a turnstile anyway.

Forty-Five Forty-Five Building (N on map)

Address:  4545 15th Ave NE

Some people just have no imagination.  This building dominates my memories of the northwest corner of campus; I walked past it for years, and often set my satchels down for a rest in a little raised non-parking space in the garage attached to it on the north.  It deserves a better name.

The ground-floor tenant is UW's computing HQ, which turns out also to lack imagination, to be in fact an ardent meme-follower:

but for some reason chooses to hide its allegiance to that meme indoors, rather than proclaim it boldly outdoors, as most private buildings in the area (and public Alumni House across the street) do.

George F. Russell Jr. Hall (O on map)

Address:  1414 NE 42nd St

Named after:  George Ford Russell, Junior, who graduated from business school in 1958 and is apparently still living.

This privately owned building was initially intended for mostly UW occupancy, but then UW bought the Safeco property and pulled out.  Now, however, its ground floor tenants include outside student-oriented organisations - some military office, Wesleyan House - and up above is much of the administrative staff of the College of Arts and Sciences, plus the Center for Neurotechnology.

It has an open lobby, but that includes no restrooms.

University of Washington Medical Center Roosevelt I (P on map)

Address:  4225 Roosevelt Way NE

Indirectly named after:  Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919.

Another UW building that puts "No public restrooms" on its front door.

However...

Yellow - Unlocked, Public Restrooms, but Hours Problems

University of Washington Medical Center Roosevelt II (Q on map)

Address:  4245 Roosevelt Way NE (however, the address etched adjacent to its main entrance is 4225!)

Also indirectly named after:  George Washington, 1732 N.S.-1799.

When I walked into this one, which does not put "No Public Restrooms" on its front door, and asked, they said "Yes, we have public restrooms, right over there."

The reason I'm not showing you the postcard shot I took, though, is the same as Jack Straw's:  They don't have their hours in plain view.  This page gives the plausible hours 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. Mondays through Fridays, but is that true only of that particular clinic, or of the whole building?  I don't seriously expect the lack of an hours posting, in a medical building (i.e., full of professionally caring people aware of the importance of hygiene) far from central campus, to be a trap baited for homeless people (any more than I expect that of Jack Straw, actually), but I do think misleading or absent hours on central campus look very like a baited trap, and I think it's important that I be consistent with this, since I'm pretty emotional about it.  As, um, witness:

Green - All good except we aren't wanted

Social Work Building (R on map)

Address:  4101 15th Ave NE

Um, speaking of professionally caring people aware of the importance of hygiene...

Well, actually, I'm being a little unfair.  Social workers don't have anything to do with the locked doors of the northern half of this building, which is the Speech and Hearing Clinic already mentioned anent Eagleson Hall above.  (Also with hours posted of 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. Mondays through Fridays, but only until 4:30 P.M. in summer.  Like Eagleson, this building is coloured as part of West Campus on the official map; it's the last of the four, the others being the two Cedar Apartments buildings.)

Anyway, here's one of the big doorways to the southern half of the building:

Maybe some of the details are hard to see at that scale, though, dear Diary, so here are a couple of close-ups for you.

"... and make sure the most vulnerable among us have the support they need.  These include people without adequate access to health care ..."

Inspiring, right?  It's on basically all the doors of the southern half of the building.  So is another sign:

Which is real?  The Social Work Building's southern half's posted hours are 7:30 A.M. to 6 P.M., Mondays through Fridays.  Will I be arrested for having used its restrooms, during those hours, two days ago?  If not, would it have been the same result if I'd been as smelly and encumbered then as I usually was while homeless?  Even after all this work, I'm not sure whether the UW is really "becoming a locked campus", as one of the employees I spoke with along the way said.  But if there's a new shipment of card readers next budget year, will the Social Work Building take some, so as to avoid such difficult questions in future?

Back when "we're all in this together" was a popular meme, say late spring 2020, I already expected a backlash.  Examples of that backlash actually happening include the curfews and weekend closures the major private academic libraries in Seattle and Tacoma have instituted while re-opening and maintained since (with one limited exception); the ongoing closure of UW's law library to the public began earlier, though.  Anyway, I think another example is the card reader boom at the UW; I just don't know how much of that is decisions by individual staffers, how much university policy.  How strong will the School of Social Work, or at least its eloquent dean, be, on behalf of those they claim to speak for, if it's the latter?

Blue - Worry-free public restrooms

University Book Store (S on map)

And speaking of strong...

This store isn't back to its pre-pandemic hours yet.  It's now open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. six days per week and noon to 4 P.M. Sundays.  It was open 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. five days per week, 10 to 6 Saturdays, and noon to 5 P.M. Sundays.

But it's still open to the public, and so are some of its restrooms.

Here's that postcard shot at last:

Ironically, it isn't actually a public building.  It's owned by a for-profit trust whose beneficiaries are UW's students.  It pays property taxes.  But somehow where all those public buildings I've already mentioned and many more besides can't afford enough toilet paper to open their doors to the public, this private one can.

Aren't you glad I organised this part this way, dear Diary?  I do so like a happy ending.  I've already finished hiking for the next part, which is West Campus proper between NE 41st St and the Burke-Gilman Trail, but may take a little while to get it written, and of course there are other pages I need to work on too.  Until we meet again, anyway, dear Diary, happy nights and happy days.