![Hat n' Boots gas station (1945), boot restrooms with hat behind them view, 6800 [East] Marginal Way [South], Route 99, Seattle, Washington](/photographs/2017702122-522405261ea4-1024.webp)
The office sat beneath a cowboy hat, and the restrooms occupied a pair of boots. At Seattle's Hat n' Boots service station, familiar clothing became usable architecture. The hat measured 44 feet across; the boots rose 22 feet.[2] Together they supplied an identity that needed little help from lettering.
HistoryLink dates the station to 1955 and records Lewis H. Nasmyth's design patent of March 20, 1956. It was intended as the centerpiece of Buford Seals's Frontier Village shopping complex near Georgetown.[2] The western costume advertised a larger commercial ambition as well as gasoline.
Margolies's 1977 view places the boot restrooms in front of the hat.[1] The ensemble matters: each object houses a different activity, yet the two remain joined by an immediately recognizable idea. The absent cowboy supplies the imaginary body connecting them.
There is a date discrepancy worth retaining. The Library title includes '1945,' while HistoryLink's construction account gives 1955.[1][2] The later date is used here for the building history; the earlier wording remains part of the archive record.
The structures moved on December 13, 2003, hat first.[2] Their relocation changed the relationship between recognizable object and commercial setting. Components made to serve a gas station could acquire a further life as neighborhood landmarks.
The earlier photograph keeps their roadside relationship available for comparison. The hat was shelter and advertisement at once; the boots combined a visual joke with an unglamorous necessity. Their appeal comes from that double duty. Enormous objects attract attention, but these were more than objects to look at: they made the work of a service station inhabitable.
