New illumination of the statue of Chief Seattle beckons viewers

After nearly 100 years in the dark, Seattle's best-known tribute to Chief Seattle glows in soft light.

Nearly three years in the doing, the $16,000 project to light the statue of Chief Seattle at Tilikum Place Park, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue, Denny Way and Cedar Street, was a labor of love.

The lights were turned on for the first time about two weeks ago. The statue shines in the winter night, along with golden leaves still clinging to sycamores rimming the park. The trees are bedecked with new sparkling lights laced through their branches as part of the lighting design.

"I loved every minute of it," said Jim Sultan, senior designer and vice president of Studio Lux in Ballard, who wound up donating more than $3,000 in time to getting the lighting just right.

"This came up, and we decided to do it pro bono," Sultan said of his firm. "We thought it would be a slam dunk and we are out of there, we didn't think it would be two and half years. But it was our contribution to the city of Seattle; we felt the statue desperately needed to be lit."

The lighting was paid for with private donations. The Seattle Parks and Recreation Department was a full partner, doing all the installation and maintenance.

The statue has lights in a fountain at its base. But for years they had not worked, and they never did light the statue well. For decades, as the lights of buildings and streetlamps came on at night, Chief Seattle disappeared in the dark.

Not anymore. Now the statue beckons viewers closer at dusk. Granite benches cut into the statue's reflecting pool invite a quite repose, to think about all that has happened while the statue, dedicated in 1912, has stood here, with the chief's right arm raised to welcome settlers at Alki Point.

Reminder of history

The monorail swishes overhead. Elevators float up the Space Needle, and back down. Passengers work their BlackBerrys on the electric buses passing by, and satellite dishes at the nearby TV station loom over it all. What would Chief Seattle have thought?

Leonard Forsman, chairman of the Suquamish tribe, said the statue is an important reminder of the city's history, as so much changes all around it.

"This is the most well-known and visible monument to Chief Seattle, other than his gravesite here at Suquamish," Forsman said. "It brings us back, and reminds us, it has a lot of symbolic presence."

Chief Seattle was born around 1786 to a Suquamish father and Duwamish mother. He witnessed the arrival of Capt. George Vancouver's ship Discovery in Puget Sound in 1792, and lived to sign over his people's lands in the Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855.

He moved to the reservation created at Suquamish, and died there in his tribe's longhouse, Old Man House, in 1866. The house was later burned by the U.S. government. Through it all, Seattle was known as a great orator, a legendary leader and a friend to the whites.

His statue has had a storied life, too. Created by James A. Wehn, it was the first piece of public art commissioned in Seattle.

But it had at least two brushes with disaster, the first when the artist, in a fit of pique at what he believed to be the selection of a substandard firm to cast the work, threw his plaster cast into Elliott Bay. He was cajoled into making another — eventually cast in bronze in New York, as he had originally stipulated.

Next came the cabbie in 1989 who took it upon himself to clean the statue with muriatic acid, nearly ruining it. The city spent thousands of dollars to clean and rehabilitate the work.

Effort organizer

Carole Jordan, who organized the effort to light the chief, has lived in the neighborhood since 1960 and has always loved the statue.

"He is so dignified," she said, "and everyone contributed, it created a really great neighborhood, we all know each other now."

Ernie Rhoads looks at the statue from the windows of his condo.

"It kind of magically glows," Rhoads said. "And it's such a grounding element, to remember whom Seattle is named after.

"While everything around it is glass and steel, it's what the heart of the city is all about."

Times news researcher Gene Balk contributed to this report.

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, originally published December 7, 2008, was corrected January 9, 2008. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Ernie Rhodes looks at the statue from the windows of his condo. "It kind of magically glows," Rhodes said. "And it's such a grounding element, to remember whom Seattle is named after. The request is for Ernie Rhoads looks at the statue from the windows of his condo. "It kind of magically glows," Rhoads said.