Pioneer Square Park, Seattle

Pioneer Park has long been dominated by a Victorian iron-and-glass pergola built in 1905 and which once sheltered the patrons of a 1.3-mile (2.1 kilometers) cable-car route. Destroyed by a truck in 2001, the pergola was so popular that a new cast- and wrought-iron one – with a safer and stronger steel structure – was unveiled less than two years later. Adjacent is the totem pole made by the Tlingit tribe of Alaska, and a bust of Chief Sealth (or Seattle) perched upon a drinking fountain.

Opposite the pergola is the Merchant's Cafe, the city's oldest restaurant, which in Gold Rush times served 5-cent beers to miners, as they waited for their turn in the brothel upstairs. Seattle's Great Fire of 1889 wiped out almost all of the bar's neighbors in the Pioneer Square area, and architect Elmer Fisher, who was responsible for at least 50 of the new structures, set the new dominant style. A characteristic example of his work is the elegant Pioneer Building (600 1st Avenue) on the plaza, whose tenants included several dozen mining companies above a saloon, which was once operated by Dr 'Doc' Maynard, one of the area's first and pre-eminent settlers.

Tip:
Doc Maynard's former saloon is now the starting point of the popular Bill Speidel's Underground Tour, an inspection of the shops and rooms that were abandoned when this part of town was rebuilt. The tour takes in a warren of the musty, debris-lined passageways and rooms that had been at ground level, and ends at the Rogue's Gallery, where old photos, magazines, artifacts, and scale models depict the area as it was before the fire. Ghost enthusiasts can also take the Paranormal Tour.