[2] It was built in 1927 by the Louis K. Liggett Company, under lease from the estate of local pioneer George Kinnear, to house the first Seattle location of their national drug store chain as well as leasable office and retail space.

In the years immediately after the Great Seattle Fire the predominantly residential Pike Street corridor was rapidly transformed into a major commercial arterial lined with denser tenement houses and hotels.

In response to the northward expansion of Seattle's business district spurned on by the Yukon Gold Rush, in 1905 he commissioned architects Graham & Myers to design a $30,000 two-story brick commercial building in the Renaissance Revival style to fill the property.

All labor and materials used on the building were locally sourced; Builders Murdock & Eckman were awarded the $600,000 contract and Steel & Phelps took care of the heating, plumbing and electric work.

[9] Among its early tenants was the offices of both the Goodwin Company and contractors Murdock & Eckman, as well as prominent residential architects J. Lister Holmes and William J.

[10] Joining Liggett's on the ground floor were Ed Oliver's clothing store on Pike[11] and Clement B. Coffin Jewelry on 4th[12] and later a branch of Van de Kamp's Holland Dutch Bakeries.

[18] Ben Bridge Jeweler, opened at 405 Pike Street in 1928, would eventually take over most of the ground floor and would become one of the Northwest's largest jewelry store chains.