Paul Hayden Kirk FAIA

AIA Seattle Medal 1984

The recognition of Paul Kirk FAIA, along with Paul Thiry FAIA, as first recipients of the AIA Seattle Medal, acknowledges their major formative role in Northwest design and the shaping of the design profession.  The highly regarded and widely published work of Paul Hayden Kirk established the image and reputation of Northwest architecture, illustrated in some sixty articles in national architectural journals between 1945 and 1970.  Notable projects include the UW Faculty Club (with Victor Steinbrueck), the University Unitarian Church, the Frank Gilbert residence at The Highlands, Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, Magnolia Branch Library, Meany Hall and Odegaard Library on Red Square as well as Haggett Hall and Balmer Hall on the University of Washington campus, and the Japanese Presbyterian Church.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1914, Paul Hayden Kirk (1914-1995: UW BArch 1937) arrived in Seattle at the age of eight, graduating from Roosevelt High School in 1932.  During his childhood Kirk suffered from polio, which left him permanently disabled.

Kirk worked with Floyd Naramore, A. M. Young, B. Dudley Stuart, and Henry Bittman before starting his own practice in 1939, designing homes for his older brother Blair Kirk, a building contractor.  His early designs included a speculative housing development on Columbia Ridge.  During World War II, Kirk joined with other architects to take advantage of war contracts, partnering with former employer B. Dudley Stuart and Robert Durham.  In 1944, Kirk established a partnership with architect James J. Chiarelli.  The firm of Chiarelli & Kirk produced a variety of Modernist structures such as the Crown Hill Medical-Dental Clinic in Seattle (1947), the Hammack House in North Edmonds (1946), the Dr. Schueler House (1947) in Port Angeles, a variety of buildings at Camp Nor’wester (1946–62) on Lopez Island, the Lakewood Community Church (1949), and homes in Bellevue’s Norwood Village (1951).

From 1950 to 1957 Kirk worked again as sole practitioner.  During this time, his designs for single-family residences displayed characteristics of the International style with flat roofs, bands of windows, and simple cubic shapes.  Noteworthy examples include the Lewis Dowell House and the George Tavernites House in Seattle, and the Lake City Clinic; Group Heath Cooperative Northgate Clinic, the Blakeley Clinic, and University Unitarian Church.  Several of Kirk’s residential works during this time gained national attention:   the Frank Gilbert House in the Highlands, the Bowman House in Kirkland, and the Evans House on Mercer Island.

In 1957, he established Paul Hayden Kirk & Associates, and in 1960 the firm of Kirk Wallace McKinley & Associates.  In 1960, in association with Victor Steinbrueck, he designed the University of Washington Faculty Center (later known as the UW Faculty Club and the UW Club), honored with design awards from AIA Washington and the American Institute of Steel Construction and published in Progressive Architecture and Steel Construction Digest.  Projects from this period also include the Seattle Public Library Magnolia Branch, the Japanese Presbyterian Church, Edmond Meany Hall at UW, the IBM Office Building in Spokane, and the Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School in Kirkland.  Kirk designs appeared in numerous local and national publications.

Kirk played an active role in Seattle civic affairs:  as an appointee to the City of Seattle Housing Board, as president of the Seattle Art Museum's Contemporary Arts Council; as a trustee on the boards of the Arboretum Foundation and the Bloedel Reserve.  With architect John Morse, he authored a plan to purchase and rehabilitate buildings in the Pike Place Market as a city facility in 1969, a step that led to the Market's eventual preservation. 

References: *DoCoMoMoWeWA

*Jeffrey Ochsner, Shaping Seattle Architecture

KING5 Evening 6/21/21:  A visionary Seattle architect's influence lives on 

Dale Kutzera 2021:  Paul Hayden Kirk and the Rise of Northwest Modernism

Grant Hildebrand 10/2021:  Paul Hayden Kirk and the Puget Sound School