Seattle

Smith Tower is a skyscraper in Pioneer Square in Seattle, Washington. Completed in 1914, the 38 storey, 149 m tower is the oldest skyscraper in... the city and was the tallest office building west of the Mississippi River until the Kansas City Power & Light Building was built in 1931. It remained the tallest building on the West Coast until the Space Needle overtook it in 1962. Smith Tower is named after its builder, firearm and typewriter magnate Lyman Cornelius Smith, and is a designated Seattle landmark. In 1909, Smith planned to build a 14-story building in Seattle. His son, Burns Lyman Smith, convinced him to build instead a much taller skyscraper to steal the crown from rival city Tacoma's National Realty Building as the tallest west of the Mississippi. Construction began in 1910. Although Smith did not live to see it, the building was completed in 1914 to a height of 143 m from curbside to the top of the pyramid, with a pinnacle height of 149 m . Its ribbon cutting was July 3, 1914. Ivar Haglund of Ivar's restaurant fame bought the tower for $1.8 million in 1976. The Samis Foundation acquired the tower in 1996.
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The Seattle Asian Art Museum is a museum of Asian art located inside Volunteer Park on Seattle, Washington USA's Capitol Hill. Part of the Seattle... Art Museum, SAAM occupies the 1933 Art Moderne building which was originally home to the Seattle Art Museum's main collection. In 1991 the main collection moved to a newly-constructed Seattle Art Museum building in downtown Seattle, at which time the Seattle Asian Art Museum was created. Admission is free on the first Thursday and the first Saturday of every month. The building is a designated Seattle landmark.
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The three-masted, fore-and-aft schooner Wawona sailed from 1897 to 1947 as a lumber carrier and fishing vessel based in Puget Sound. The schooner was... built in near Eureka, California on Humboldt Bay by Hans Ditlev Bendixsen , who was one of the most important West Coast shipbuilders of the late 19th century. From 1897 to 1913, she carried lumber from Grays Harbor and Puget Sound ports to California. One of her captains, Ralph E. "Matt" Peasley, inspired a series of popular novels. Wawona was 165 feet long with a 35-foot beam. Her masts, before being cut down, were 110 feet tall. She was berthed at South Lake Union Park in Seattle adjacent to the Center for Wooden Boats. She was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Washington State Heritage Register, and the vessel was an official city landmark. However, after efforts to restore the decaying ship failed, she was dismantled in March 2009. From 1914 until 1947, except during World War II, Wawona sailed to the Bering Sea with a crew of 36 to fish for cod. In 1935, her captain, Charles Foss, died at the wheel during a storm in the Aleutian Islands.
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The Arthur Foss, built in 1889, is one of the oldest wooden-hulled tugboats afloat in the United States. In 1898, in response to the Alaskan gold... rush, she transported barges full of gold seeking miners and supplies up the Inside Passage. There are no other Alaskan Gold Rush vessels still operating today. She was cast by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio to play in its 1933 production Tugboat Annie. In World War II, Arthur Foss journeyed south to join the war effort. Before the Battle of Wake Island began in late 1941, she was the last vessel to get away. After the war, she served the economy of the Northwest by working in the timber industry. The Arthur Foss has a six-cylinder, 700 horsepower diesel engine. Her top speed is 13 knots . The vessel is 111.6 feet long with a beam of 23.9 feet and a draft of 15 feet . When last operated the vessel was owned by Foss Launch and Tug Company who donated her to Northwest Seaport in 1970. Northwest Seaport renovated her in 2004. The vessel was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989 and is a city landmark as well.
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The Zodiac is a two-masted schooner designed by William H. Hand, Jr. for the heirs to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals fortune. Hand... intended to epitomize the best features of the American fishing schooner. The 160-foot-long , 145-ton vessel competed in transatlantic races before being sold to the San Francisco Bar Pilots Association during the Great Depression. Renamed California, she served actively as a pilot boat before being retired in 1972. This makes her one of the last three sail-powered pilot vessels in the United States, along with the Boston-based schooner Roseway, which was retired sometime between 1971 and 1973,, and Adventuress, also once a San Francisco pilot boat, which was retired in 1952, and is also a registered National Historic Landmark. Zodiac was sold in 1973 and, in the late 1970s, the private Vessel Zodiac Corporation was formed to operate and maintain her. She was professionally restored, and her rig, which had been altered during her time as a pilot boat, was returned to its original configuration. The Zodiac now operates for charter in Washington State's San Juan Islands and British Columbia's Gulf Islands.
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Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti is an American actor. An acclaimed character actor, Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films... produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon, before earning lead roles in several projects in the 2000s including American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, The Illusionist, John Adams, Cold Souls, Barney's Version, and Win Win. Giamatti, the youngest of three children, was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Angelo Bartlett Giamatti, was a Yale University professor who later became president of the university and commissioner of Major League Baseball. His mother, Toni Marilyn , was a homemaker and English teacher who taught at Hopkins School and had also previously acted. His father was of Italian and English descent and his mother was of Irish and English ancestry. Giamatti's paternal grandmother was from a family with deep roots in New England, and his paternal grandfather was the son of Italian immigrants from Telese.
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David John "Dave" Matthews is a South African–born American musician and occasional actor, best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and... guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band. He performs mainly with acoustic guitar and favors rhythm rather than solos in his playing. David John Matthews was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the third of four children of American parents John and Valerie Matthews. At two years old, Matthews' family moved to Yorktown Heights in Westchester County, New York, where his father, a physicist, started working for IBM. In 1974, the family moved to Cambridge, England, for a year before returning to New York, where his father died from lung cancer in 1977. Biographer Nevin Martell argues that Dave's father's death may be an impetus for his "carpe diem" lyrics. At some point while residing in New York, Matthews attended his first concert, when his mother took him to a performance by Pete Seeger. The family moved back to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1977.
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Brandon Bruce Lee was an American actor and martial artist. He was the son of martial arts film star Bruce Lee. After a promising start in action... movies and the signing of a multi-film contract with 20th Century Fox, Lee was accidentally shot and killed in North Carolina at the age of 28 while filming The Crow. Brandon Lee was born in Oakland, California, the son of martial artist and actor Bruce Lee and Linda Emery. A week after his birth, his grandfather Lee Hoi-Chuen died. The family moved to Los Angeles, California when he was three months old. When offers for film roles became limited for his father, he and his family moved back to Hong Kong in 1965. His heritage on his mother's side is English and Swedish and his father is 3/4 Chinese and 1/4 German. When Brandon was eight, his father died suddenly from cerebral edema. After his father's death, his family moved back to the United States. They lived briefly in his mother's hometown of Seattle, Washington, and then in Los Angeles, where Lee grew up in the affluent area of Rolling Hills.
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Dyan Cannon is an American film and television actress, director, screenwriter, editor, and producer. Cannon was born in Tacoma, Washington. Her... mother Claire was a homemaker; Cannon's father Ben sold life insurance. Cannon was raised in the Jewish faith of her mother, who had emigrated from Russia; Dyan's father was Baptist. She attended West Seattle High School. Cannon made her screen debut in 1960 in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, however her small screen debut was in the late 1950s including a guest appearance on Bat Masterson in 1959, in the episode entitled "Lady Luck". Another role was as Mona Elliott, with fellow guest star Franchot Tone, in the episode "The Man Behind the Man" of the 1964 CBS drama, The Reporter, with Harry Guardino in the title role. She also made appearances on 77 Sunset Strip, the perennial western series Gunsmoke, The Untouchables and the syndicated Two Faces West in the 1960 episode entitled "Sheriff of the Town". In 1969, Cannon starred with an ensemble cast led by Natalie Wood in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, a film about sexual revolution in which she played Alice.
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Rose Arianna McGowan is an American actress and singer. She is well known for her role as Paige Matthews in The WB Television Network supernatural... drama series Charmed. She played Ann-Margret alongside Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Elvis Presley in the CBS mini-series Elvis. In 2008, she was guest programmer and co-host of TCM's film-series program, The Essentials. She made her film debut in the 1992 comedy Encino Man, where she played a small role. Her performance as Amy Blue in the 1995 dark comedy film The Doom Generation brought her to a wider attention, and received an Independent Spirit Award nomination. McGowan then appeared in the 1996 hit horror film Scream and starred alongside Ben Affleck in the 1997 coming-of-age feature Going All the Way. Later, she appeared in several Hollywood films, including Devil in the Flesh , Jawbreaker , Ready to Rumble , Monkeybone and The Black Dahlia . In 2007, she was cast in the double-feature film directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino Grindhouse. She also portrayed the character Grace in the crime thriller film Fifty Dead Men Walking .
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Neko Case is an American singer-songwriter, best known for her solo career and her contributions as a member of the Canadian indie rock group The... New Pornographers. Case recorded and toured for several years as Neko Case & Her Boyfriends before performing solely under her name. She primarily performs her own material, but also performs and has recorded cover versions of songs by artists such as Harry Nilsson, Loretta Lynn, Tom Waits, Nick Lowe, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Scott Walker, Randy Newman, Queen, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Sparks and Hank Williams. Case was born in Alexandria, Virginia, to teenage parents of Ukrainian ancestry. The original family name, changed before she was born, was Shevchenko. Her family traveled around while she was young before settling in Tacoma, Washington, the city she considers her hometown. She left home when she was fifteen. Her father was in the United States Air Force. In 1994, Case moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, to attend the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.
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Jennifer Jean Warnes is an American singer, songwriter, arranger and record producer. She is known for her interpretations of compositions written... by herself and many others, as well as an extensive playlist as a vocalist on movie soundtracks. Between 1979 and 1987 Warnes surpassed Frank Sinatra as the vocalist performing the most songs to be nominated for and to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Her biggest hits include two of these Billboard chart topping Oscar and Grammy winners – "Up Where We Belong" and " The Time of My Life" . Warnes was born in Seattle, Washington and raised in Anaheim, California. Her desire and ability to sing came early; at age seven she was offered her first recording contract, which her father turned down. She sang in church and local pageants, until age 17 when Warnes was offered an opera scholarship to Immaculate Heart College. She chose to sing folk music as it became popularized by Joan Baez in the mid-1960s.
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Ryan Lee Stiles is an American actor, comedian, director, and voice actor whose work is often associated with improvisational comedy. He is best... known for his improv and co-production work on the American and British versions of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the role of Lewis Kiniski on The Drew Carey Show. He plays Herb Melnick on the CBS comedy Two and a Half Men and was a performer on the show Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza. Stiles was born in Seattle, Washington, the youngest of five children. His father, Sonny, was a fishing plant supervisor. Stiles lived in Vancouver, British Columbia as a teenager. At the age of seventeen, he dropped out of his high school, Richmond Secondary, to pursue a career in comedy. He briefly worked in his father's fish-processing plant to earn a living. He then began performing improv with Vancouver TheatreSports League. In 1986, Stiles successfully auditioned for a berth at Toronto's renowned Second City comedy ensemble. By 1989, Stiles had gained the attention of the producers of the British improvisational comedy show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?.
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Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records ; and for her social... activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado. Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. As a child, Collins studied classical piano with Antonia Brico, making her public debut at age 13, performing Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos. Dr. Brico took a dim view, both then and later, of Collins's developing interest in folk music, which led her to the difficult decision to discontinue her piano lessons. Years later, when Collins had become internationally known through her music, she invited Dr. Brico to one of her concerts in Denver. When they met after the performance, Brico took both of Judy's hands in hers, looked wistfully at her fingers and said, "Little Judy—you really could have gone places." Still later, Collins discovered that Brico herself had made a living when she was younger playing jazz and ragtime piano .
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June Havoc was a Canadian-born American actress, dancer, writer, and theater director. Havoc was a child Vaudeville performer under the tutelage of... her mother. She later acted on Broadway and in Hollywood and stage directed . She last appeared on television in 1990 on General Hospital. Havoc was the younger sister of burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee. She was born as either "Ellen Evangeline Hovick" or "Ellen June Hovick," in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, probably in 1912, although she herself was uncertain of the year, owing to the frequent forging by her mother, Rose Thompson, of numerous birth certificates, according to The New York Times obituary. Other sources indicate 1913. Her lifelong career in show business began when she was a child, billed as "Baby June". Her only sibling, Rose Louise Hovick , was called "Louise" by her family members. Their parents were Rose Thompson Hovick and John Olaf Hovick, a Norwegian-American, who worked as a newspaper advertising man.
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Gypsy Rose Lee was an American burlesque entertainer famous for her striptease act. She was also an actress, author, and playwright whose 1957... memoir was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy. Gypsy Rose Lee was born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington, in 1911, although her mother later shaved three years off both of her daughters' ages. She was initially known by her middle name, Louise. Her mother, Rose Hovick , was a teenage bride fresh from a convent school when she married Norwegian-American John Olaf Hovick, who was a newspaper advertising salesman and a reporter at The Seattle Times. Louise's sister, Ellen June Hovick , was born in 1913. After their parents divorced, the girls supported the family by appearing in Vaudeville, where June's talent shone while Louise remained in the background. At the age of 15 in December 1928, June eloped with Bobby Reed, a dancer in the act, much to her mother's displeasure, going on to a brief career in marathon dancing, which was more profitable than tap dancing at the time.
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Chris Cornell is an American rock musician best known as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist for Soundgarden and as the former lead vocalist for... Audioslave. He is also known for his numerous solo works and soundtrack contributions since 1991. He is known for his wide vocal range, spanning B1-G5 in full-voice, and up to E6 in falsetto, as well as his powerful vocal belting technique. He was the founder and frontman for Temple of the Dog, the one-off tribute band dedicated to his former roommate, Andrew Wood. He has released three solo studio albums, Euphoria Morning , Carry On , and Scream . Cornell was ranked 4th in the list of "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists" by Hit Parader. He performed the theme song to the James Bond film Casino Royale , "You Know My Name." Cornell was born and raised in Seattle, Washington and attended Christ the King, Catholic elementary school and Shorewood High School. His parents are Ed Boyle and Karen Cornell .
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