Seattle has more than 450 individually designated landmarks and eight historic districts, according to the city’s Historic Preservation Program. If you own or are purchasing a landmarked building, understanding the preservation review process is essential before planning any work.
How Seattle Landmarks Work
The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board designates individual landmarks and administers controls over what can and cannot be changed on designated properties. Designation protects the “significant character-defining features” of a building, not necessarily every element of it.
Certificate of Approval
Any exterior changes to a designated landmark require a Certificate of Approval from the Landmarks Preservation Board. This includes repainting, reroofing, window replacement, and additions. Interior changes that affect character-defining features also require approval.
Planning a project?
Planning a remodel of your own?
Send David the address and a few lines about what you want. The first feasibility check is free and usually takes about a day: what the site and the code are likely to allow, and what to check first.
Architect since 1996, member of the AIA and NCARB. Three Masonry Excellence Awards for commercial projects; the Carr residence was featured in Above The Lake and Lux magazines.
Design Standards for Landmark Renovations
Landmark renovations are guided by the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, which allow for modernization and new use while preserving historic character. New additions should be distinguishable from the historic fabric but compatible in scale and materials.
Seattle’s Eight Historic Districts
A Certificate of Approval is needed before changes to an individually designated landmark or to any property inside one of the city’s eight historic districts, whether or not that particular building is itself a landmark. Each district has its own board or review committee and its own guidelines, so the process differs from one to the next.
Harvard-Belmont Landmark District
(1980). A 14-block, predominantly residential area on the west slope of Capitol Hill, and the district most homeowners run into. Approval is required before any building permit for work visible from a public right-of-way: additions, exterior alterations, demolition, new construction, and adding or removing major site elements such as retaining walls, fences and gates, trees and driveways.
Columbia City Landmark District
(1978). Commercial buildings, churches, apartments and houses in the Rainier Valley. An Application Review Committee advises the Landmarks Preservation Board on every proposed change.
Ballard Avenue Landmark District
(1976). Ballard’s original commercial spine. Review covers any exterior change visible from a street, alley or right-of-way, including painting and signage.
Pioneer Square Preservation District
(1970), Seattle’s first.
Pike Place Market Historical District
(1971), established by voter initiative and administered by a 12-member commission.
International Special Review District
(1973).
Fort Lawton Landmark District
(1977), in Discovery Park.
Sand Point Naval Air Station Landmark District
(2011), the eighth and most recent.
Every board has adopted the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation as its standard for review, alongside its own district guidelines.
Preliminary Design Review
For a significant change, you do not have to commit to a finished design before learning what the board will accept. An owner can make a written request to submit a Certificate of Approval application for preliminary design. If it is granted, the approval is conditional on a later submittal of the final design. The city describes it as a way to give owners early guidance on major changes to landmark buildings or on new construction in historic districts, and on anything beyond a minor alteration it is usually worth using.
Adding to a Historic Home
The rule every review board applies to additions comes from two of the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards. New work should be differentiated from the old yet compatible with its massing, size, scale and architectural features, and it should be built so that if it were removed in future, the essential form and integrity of the historic house would be unimpaired.
In practice that rules out copying historic details, which creates a false sense of history, and it rules out a contemporary box that ignores the house. What it asks for is an addition that reads as new at close range and belongs at a distance. The approaches that usually satisfy it:
- Rear additions that leave the street facade intact.
- Second story additions set back from the front wall to reduce their bulk from the street.
- Dormers that add usable attic space without redrawing the roofline.
- A detached garage or backyard unit in compatible materials with plainly contemporary detailing.
Landmark, District, or Simply Old?
Three different situations, often confused. A designated landmark needs a Certificate of Approval for exterior changes and for interior changes that affect its character-defining features. A house inside a historic district needs one for the kinds of work that district regulates, even if the house itself was never designated. An older house that is neither carries no preservation review at all: the ordinary building permit applies, and good design is a choice rather than a requirement. Establishing which of the three you are in is the first thing to do, before any design work.
What Older Homes Hide
Older houses carry conditions nobody can see until walls open: knob-and-tube wiring, lead paint, asbestos and non-standard framing. On pre-1960 houses we advise budgeting a 15% to 20% contingency, because on these projects the question is rarely whether something will be found, only what.
Sources: Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, Historic Preservation Program; Seattle Historic Districts brochure, which also sets out the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation.
Working with a Preservation Architect
Landmark renovation requires an architect familiar with preservation standards, the Certificate of Approval process, and the specific sensitivities of the building’s historic character. Piper Cole Architects has experience with historic renovation projects in Seattle. free feasibility check, call 425-753-6452.
