The U.S. Immigrant Station and Assay Office Seattle is a four-story neoclassical style building located at 815 Airport Way South in Seattle, Washington. It opened in 1932 as an immigration detention and processing station and assay office. It is now known as Inscape Arts, and houses approximately 125 artists, craftspeople, studios, non-profit organizations, and a Shakespearean theater company.
U.S. Immigrant Station and Assay Office | |
![]() US Immigrant Station and Assay Office Seattle, now Inscape, in 2014. | |
Location | 815 Airport Way, S., Seattle, Washington |
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Coordinates | 47°35′42.5″N 122°19′37.4″W / 47.595139°N 122.327056°W |
Area | 1.2 acres (0.49 ha) |
Built | 1929 |
Architectural style | Neo-Classic |
NRHP reference No. | 79002542[1] |
Added to NRHP | January 1, 1979 |
In its early life, the building was used mostly to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act. The top floor housed assay operations until 1955. The building closed as an immigration and detention center in 2004, when the Northwest Detention Center opened in Tacoma. It was sold to investors in 2008 for $4.4 million,[2] and reopened as Inscape Arts in 2010 after renovations.[3]
The Wing Luke Museum’s permanent exhibition Voices of the Immigration Station includes placards and other interpretive material throughout the building.[4]
References
edit- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. November 2, 2013.
- ^ "Seattle's Historic INS Building Now Artist Studios | Seattle Magazine". Archived from the original on December 27, 2019. Retrieved December 27, 2019.
- ^ "The grim history of INS Building". October 31, 2017.
- ^ "Inscape Used to be a Prison for Immigrants. Now It's a Home for Artists".
External links
edit- Media related to U.S. Immigrant Station and Assay Office (Seattle) at Wikimedia Commons