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All the United States Washington Seattle The Red Hall at Seattle's Central Library

The Red Hall at Seattle's Central Library

A colorful architectural gem in Seattle's uniquely modern Central Library.

Seattle, Washington

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Benedict Cosgrove
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The Red Hall, Seattle Central Library   Benedict Cosgrove / Atlas Obscura User
The Red Hall, Seattle Central Library   Benedict Cosgrove / Atlas Obscura User
The Red Hall, Seattle Central Library   Benedict Cosgrove / Atlas Obscura User
Seattle Central Library   Benedict Cosgrove / Atlas Obscura User
Cross-hash Glass Overlook on south end   Aty Trocious / Atlas Obscura User
Red hall March 2024   Joe from Bellingham / Atlas Obscura User
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Elevator hall on the Red Foor   CatAshbee / Atlas Obscura User
Red hall March 2024   Joe from Bellingham / Atlas Obscura User
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About

The experience of walking around or hanging out in the Red Hall, even for a few minutes, is at once thrilling and slightly disorientating. It's as if you had suddenly traded places with a crew member aboard the Proteus, the miniaturized submarine that travels through a scientist's circulatory system in the 1966 sci-fi classic "Fantastic Voyage." 

Located on the fourth floor, its blood-colored, curving walls and walkways, as well as the organically shaped interior windows and other architectural details of the Red Hall, do strongly bring to mind the cardiovascular. The difference here, on this trip, is you only have to take an elevator to another floor if you start to feel queasy.

The Red Hall is just one floor of Seattle's Central Library, the flagship of the city's library system, which inside and out looks and feels like a structure that is absolutely cutting edge. The beautiful Central Library is filled with striking rooms and unexpected architectural vistas, as well as oceans of natural light (the glass that sheathes the library would cover more than five football fields).

The floor that features the Red Hall houses the bulk of the library's meeting rooms and according to the building's designers it is one of the building's five "stable" platforms, each of which is "a programmatic cluster that is architecturally defined and equipped for maximum, dedicated performance." (By contrast, the building's four "unstable spaces," such as the Reading Room and the Living Room area for kids "function as trading floors where librarians inform and stimulate, where the interface between the different platforms is organized.")

In this almost aggressively innovative building the Red Hall stands out as an especially colorful architectural gem.

Related Tags

Libraries Books Architecture Design

Know Before You Go

Be sure to give yourself time to check out the rest of the building. It is a bold, welcoming, perfectly 21st-century library.

Community Contributors

Added By

Benedict Cosgrove

Edited By

jefftml, CatAshbee, Aty Trocious, Joe from Bellingham

  • jefftml
  • CatAshbee
  • Aty Trocious
  • Joe from Bellingham

Published

July 13, 2016

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  • http://www.spl.org/locations/central-library/cen-about-the-central-library
The Red Hall at Seattle's Central Library
1000 4th Ave
Seattle, Washington, 98104
United States
47.6066, -122.332984
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