New, old look for courthouse

Four years after Seattle municipal government got a new, sleekly modern City Hall, the seat of King County government across the street might get de-modernized.

The latest effort to restore some of the 91-year-old architectural origins of the county courthouse will be a study of whether and how to strip it of the massive aluminum panels that cover many of the 12-story structure's original oak-framed windows.

While reduction of energy consumption is a goal of many building modernization projects, it's open to debate whether removal of the window covers would lower or increase courthouse energy usage.

The giant, unattractive bands of aluminum were bolted to the building as part of a massive, scandal-tinged remodeling and "modernization" project in the mid-1960s.

They cover windows on the courthouse's east and west sides, facing Third and Fourth avenues, respectively, as well as windows on the insides of the building's "H" shape, mainly to shut off views from courtrooms.

"Then they put gypsum boards on the inside (of the building) so that they sandwiched the windows inside the courtrooms," said Jim Napolitano, a project consultant with the county facilities management division.

"The windows are double-hung, single-pane oak windows, and they're huge," he said. "They're solid oak -- the frames, the sashes -- and they're beautiful. And they've all been hermetically sealed since 1966 or 1967."

The window proposal comes on the heels of a plan to restore the courthouse's original 1916 grand south entrance, made of irreplaceable Alaskan white marble but currently used as a loading dock. It faces City Hall Park, which the city plans to improve.

County Councilmen Dow Constantine and Bob Ferguson, both Seattle Democrats, said the two courthouse restoration projects will return the historic building "to a more dignified appearance."

Uncovering the windows, Ferguson said, and "restoring the historic integrity of the building and bringing natural light to the courtrooms will humanize the pursuit of justice and reconnect the people who visit this most public building with the story of its past."

Noel Treat, the county's deputy director of facilities management, said his understanding is that the windows were sealed to keep out energy-robbing sunlight and prevent jurors in trials from being distracted by looking out the windows.

A supplemental capital improvement budget passed by the County Council and sent to County Executive Ron Sims last week included $109,000 to do a feasibility and cost analysis of uncovering the windows and $250,000 to begin design work on the south entrance.

County officials haven't yet given the go-ahead to either project. Sims has recommended that if the council decides to proceed with the south entrance remodeling, it eliminate the courthouse loading dock to save money; convert it into the courthouse's main entrance, increase security staffing and turn the existing Third and Fourth avenue entrances into exit-only doors.

Ferguson and Constantine said uncovering the courthouse windows would achieve "energy savings through the replacement of the noninsulated aluminum panels with historically appropriate double-paned windows that match the courthouse's 1916 Second Renaissance Revival design."

Not necessarily, Treat suggested.

Cooling the building in the summer requires more energy than heating it in the winter, and by uncovering the windows, "there is some concern that this could have a negative energy impact" by letting in sunlight, he said.

In addition, the combination of the aluminum exterior panels and the interior panels, with the windows sandwiched in between, "created a sort of dead air space that has some insulative effect in the winter," Treat said.

"We have to study how that upgrade would compare with ... what we've got in the existing structure. But we do have a concern that it could actually result in an increase in our energy usage."