Pergola gets finishing touches before its restoration party

Construction sites don't usually make people cry. Or become tourist attractions. Or capture the affection of an entire neighborhood.

But then, this is the Pioneer Square pergola, where workers are wrapping up a very intense and very public reconstruction project.

In January 2001, when a lost U.S. Express truck driver plowed into the historic 1909 canopy, reducing it to a pile of cast iron and glass, many considered it a tragedy.

"In this community, it was like a death," said Gary Sanders, superintendent with Anthony Construction, which is rebuilding the pergola.

After a year-and-a-half of meticulous sorting and reconstruction of the pergola's shattered original pieces, and reproduction of its complicated design, the pergola has been reborn at First Avenue and Yesler Way.

Workers are down to touching up paint, sweeping walkways and screwing in light globes in preparation for its grand opening at 10 a.m. Saturday.

The pergola party will be boisterous, said Joelle Ligon, with Seattle Parks and Recreation.

And partygoers will get copper rosette souvenirs made from leftover pieces of the original roof.

U.S. Express, whose insurers paid the $3.8 million tab, will be there too.

It's been an extraordinary job, Sanders said.

And the army of workers — carpenters, ironworkers, plumbers, electricians, painters, sheet-metal workers and laborers — will be proud to give the pergola back to the city.

Building the structure on the busy corner, with a public viewing area on the site's edge, was like working in a fishbowl, he said. Folks taking the Underground Tour stared and tourists riding the Ducks shouted encouragement at workers. And one woman, a Seattle native who recently retired to California, cried. "She thought it was gone," Sanders said.

It might have been, had it not been for Heidi Seidelhuber and Terry Seaman, presidents of Seidelhuber Iron and Bronze Works, said Dan Johnson, city parks-project manager.

The company rehabilitated 99 percent of the original structure.

"I firmly believe they are the only people in existence who could do this," Johnson said.

"If Heidi were around when Humpty Dumpty fell, Humpty Dumpty would be together today," he said.

But Seidelhuber, known as the genius behind the scenes, is modest.

"It's more tenacity than genius," she said. "The work we did wasn't special, it's just special that it was done."

Because she had to work backward from tons of cast-iron pieces with no plans, workers had to solve problems along the way, Seidelhuber said. Everything about the pergola was irregular — its column's lengths varied and similar pieces weren't made the same.

The new structure, with its 40,000-pound steel skeleton, 12 ornate Corinthian-style columns, 16 arches and 60-foot glass-paned canopy, should last another century, she said.

Every company that worked on it — architects Ron Wright and Associates, Anthony Construction, Corona Steel, Queen City Sheet Metal and Roofing, Wright Inc. and Long Painting, among others — sent their most experienced people, Seidelhuber said. Everyone wanted to be involved.

That's why the rosettes were made.

"Everyone who worked on the project wanted to have a piece of it, but it all had to go back in," she said.

Paysha Stockton can be reached at 206-464-2752 or pstockton@seattletimes.com.