Pattern Language: Tiled Entryways of First Street

If buildings on First Street could talk, I would be a happy historian. Sometimes, if you look close, they do talk.

Just underfoot, cemented in entryways, the identities of businesses long-gone continue to advertise. The durable tiled typography leaves a record of those that came before.

Tile-making began in the Middle East in the 4th century BC. Romans learned the process and brought it to Europe. For centuries, handmade and hand-painted tile was a rare and expensive decor choice.

In 1843, Englishman Herbert Minton developed a mechanized manufacturing process for the art of tile-making. Prices dropped, and tile became available to the European masses. In 1870, the United States developed its own tile industry.

Quickly, tile became one of the hottest domestic trends. Victorian-era Americans were obsessed with cleanliness and elaborate decoration. Ceramic tiles made perfect replacements for wood, a material guilty of harboring mold, germs, and dust. Smooth tiled surfaces, on the other hand, could easily be wiped clean and sanitized. Tiles used inside or outside of one's business was both high-end and hygienic.

Snohomish has a wealth of original tiled entryways. To install them, glazed ceramic tiles were set in mortar over a substrate of brick, then the crevices filled with a black cement. Unlike today's ready-to-go tile sheeting, each tile would have been laid individually. This was tedious and highly creative work.

First Street's tile designs feature prominent borders and serif typefaces. Composed mainly of white hexagon tiles, there are also accents of red and brown (colored with iron), green (copper), blue (cobalt), and black (carbon). They are found in the entryways of the Union Block (910-908 First Street), Blackman Building (1110-1102 First Street), and Brunswick Building (1212-1202 First Street), with a few independent others. Most are from the same time frame of the 1900s-1910s, and by the same tile designer.

The entrance of the former Snohomish Drug Company (1116 First Street) is later, in more of an Art Nouveau/Art Deco style. It also incorporates squares and custom-fit pieces in addition to hexagons.

Ceramic tiles are made from clay. Formed and flattened when soft, they are dried slowly and fired in a kiln for 30-40 hours at temperatures of up to 2500 degrees F. Brick is made by a similar process. Because of their weight, tiles and bricks were costly to ship. So manufacture of these materials was sited locally and finished items were sold and used within the immediate neighboring region.

The clay used for the tile on First Street is likely sourced direct from the Snohomish River. The rich soil deposits of the Snohomish River Valley provided clay, kaolin, and feldspar–the necessary ingredients for tile-making–and attracted multiple brick and tile factories.

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