Truck Levels Seattle Monument

S E A T T L E, Jan. 15 -- The historic iron and glass pergola at PioneerSquare, one of the city's most famous meeting spots, collapsedearly today when it was struck by a truck, police said.

Police spokesman Sean O'Donnell said a truck clipped a corner ofthe 91-year-old structure at about 5:45 a.m. and knocked it down.No one apparently was beneath the canopy on the holiday morning,and no injuries were reported. The pergola, originally built as a cable car stop and as a grandentrance to a lavish underground restroom, was about 60 feet longand 16 feet high. It fell to a twisted and shattered pile ofwreckage on the cobblestone square, although much of the uppercanopy framework appeared intact. O'Donnell said a tractor-trailer rig coming west on Yesler Waytried to turn right onto First Avenue. Its rear tires came up ontothe sidewalk, caught a corner of the pergola, "and the whole thingwent over." The driver was cited for driving on the sidewalk, O'Donnellsaid. The police spokesman said it appeared much of the structurecould be salvaged, but no appraisal of the damage or its possiblerepair had been done.

National Historic Landmark

The graceful Victorian-style structure is a national historiclandmark on the triangular park that is the namesake for Seattle'sPioneer Square neighborhood, the area of downtown where the city ofSeattle began. Pioneer Square, at First Avenue and Yesler Way, is the site ofthe city's first sawmill, built in 1853 by Henry Yesler. Yesler Waywas the original "skid road" by which logs were brought down thehillside to the mill, a term later adopted for rough neighborhoodsfor the down-and-out. Although street people, alcoholics and those down on their luckstill populate the area, since the 1960s the Pioneer Squaredistrict has become home to fashionable shops and restaurants,condominiums and offices. The pergola, with its lacy ironwork and glass panels, was builtin 1909 as a stop for the Yesler Street cable car, and as theentrance to what city boosters called "the finest undergroundrestroom in the United States."