Smith Tower
Terra-cotta skyscraper with a hand-carved Chinese Room and open-air observation deck above the city.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Smith Tower in Seattle starts with a very basic disagreement nobody can settle: how many floors it actually has, and where it once ranked among the world's tallest buildings. It lingers on the hand-carved Chinese Room three hundred feet up, and the long-told story that its blackwood furniture and carved ceiling arrived as a gift from Cixi, the last empress of China, in thanks for a shipment of typewriters and rifles. You'll hear why historians eventually questioned that story. Ride the century-old birdcage elevator up and see the room for yourself.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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