Gallery owner helped to restore Pioneer Square for artists, businesses

Back in the 1960s, when wrecking balls were swinging in Pioneer Square and historic buildings crashed down to make way for parking lots, Richard White was one of the Seattle visionaries who saw potential in that run-down neighborhood.

Mr. White, the first gallery owner and one of the prime movers in the renovation of Pioneer Square, died Monday (July 22) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, at age 78. He'd been living there for the past 20 years.

"He created the gallery world as we know it now," said Randy Nausid, who worked for Mr. White in Seattle and Cuernavaca. "It was his enthusiasm and energy, and I guess the word 'magic' comes into it."

In partnership with Seattle architect Ralph Anderson and developer Alan Black, Mr. White helped save Pioneer Square from destruction and turned it into a scenic and vital community of artists and businesses. Among the buildings Mr. White owned were the Grand Central Hotel and The Globe. He held a long-term lease on the Occidental Building, where he opened his gallery.

He also bought and developed Kiana Lodge, a private club at Agate Pass on the Olympic Peninsula, renowned as a site for elegant parties and weddings.

Mr. White made his fortune as an entrepreneur in the Northwest, but his roots were in Butte, Mont., where he was born Feb. 1, 1924. He attended the University of Montana for a while, according to his niece, Kathy White of Cuernavaca. Later, in Seattle, he studied poetry with Theodore Roethke at the University of Washington.

In the 1940s, Mr. White was hired as a crew member on the yacht of Robert Lambert, owner of Heineken breweries. Lambert was headed to Alaska with his friend Baron Raoul Kuffner, a wealthy German aristocrat, to hunt bears. When the boat's chef got drunk and rowdy in Juneau, Alaska, and ended up in jail, Mr. White volunteered to take over the kitchen. His superb cooking quickly won the appreciation of those two influential men. Lambert became Mr. White's patron and sent him to Paris, according to a biography of artist Tamara de Lempicka, who was married to Kuffner.

Known for his charm and entrepreneurial skills, Mr. White made his mark on the Northwest as an art dealer in the 1960s. He opened a shop for artifacts and collectibles on Occidental Avenue South that eventually became the Richard White Gallery. His first painting show, of work by Northwest artist Jack Stangle, sold out in two hours on opening night.

"He did help a lot of young artists and was very good to them," architect Anderson said.

Artists whom Mr. White represented were among the region's top names: Leo Kenney, Morris Graves, Frank Okada, Richard Gilkey, Tony Angell and Albert Fisher, among others.

Seattle artist Jan Thompson worked for Mr. White at the gallery and remembers his charisma:

"He made everything an exciting adventure," she said. "He spent money like water. He made it and lost it."

In 1973, Mr. White sold his gallery to Donald Foster, who still runs Foster White Gallery in a nearby storefront on South Jackson Street.

While developing his business at Kiana Lodge, Mr. White continued to deal in art and artifacts, for a while selling primitive and tribal arts at a shop in the Grand Central. He donated the totem poles that stand in Occidental Park and was responsible for getting trees planted in Pioneer Square, Nausid said.

"Once he got his mind set on something it would take an awful lot to stop him," Anderson said.

In the late 1970s, Mr. White bought a house in Cuernavaca, where he knew other Seattle expatriates, and soon created a high-end real-estate market there when he resold the house for a huge sum to a Hollywood executive.

"We put on this big party when Richard was trying to sell the house, and I had to sit with two old ladies," former employee Nausid recalled. "One of them was (art collector) Peggy Guggenheim, the other was Clark Gable's widow, Kay Spreckles."

Mr. White was known for his lavish parties, entertaining poet Octavio Paz and close friends such as artist de Lempicka, who lived in Cuernavaca.

Charming as Mr. White could be, he had an edge to his personality as well, Thompson said. "He could be a devil, too. He had a temper. He dressed so badly: old shirt, big stomach sticking out; he didn't bathe all the time."

One of the sweetest things about him, she said, was his love of animals. Once, he found three abandoned baby geese at Stanley Park in Vancouver, B.C., and smuggled them home to Seattle in a cake box.

"Oh! the best thing," Thompson laughed. "He taught them how to fly!

"Imagine this big heavy man, running up and down waving his arms. And they learned how to fly that way — isn't that beautiful?"

Mr. White's survivors include his nephew, Robert White Jr., and sister-in-law, Jean White, both of Hamilton, Mont.

Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com.