On the side of a bank that very nearly became apartments, a new mural confronts housing insecurity and rapid change on Capitol Hill

(Image: CHS)

(Image: @glynn.rosenberg)

The crop of Capitol Hill murals popping up this fall includes a new work on the side of a 15th Ave E bank that would be an apartment building if the currents of redevelopment bringing change to the neighborhood twenty years ago had not been blocked by a worldwide financial meltdown.

For artist Glynn Rosenberg, her newly unveiled giant work on the north side of the street’s Key Bank is a message to Capitol Hill that the artist says explores housing insecurity and the reality “people can’t afford to live in Capitol Hill anymore” —

This mural is my love letter to my neighborhood. It is a utopian vision that reflects the past while having hope for the future. It is deeply personal to me, as I try to understand my own place in Capitol Hill. Change, progress, development – all of this moves at its own pace, determined by broader socio-economic factors – and I don’t think it can be stopped or slowed in an effort to preserve the Soul of Capitol Hill.

Key Bank says the GSBA, funding from King County, and Urban ArtWorks helped make Rosenberg’s project possible.

The 2008 financial crisis also helped.

In 2005, Key Bank had the property lined up for a rezone approved by the city to make way for what would have been a first on the street — a 40-foot tall mixed-use apartment building. The project — with design in hand — was stopped cold by the mortgage meltdown and economic crisis that soon followed.

Today, the 1960-era bank building still stands, rising above one of the largest remaining surface parking lots on Capitol Hill.

Other mixed-use projects with dozens of new apartments have risen along the street and its current era is marked by the long wait for what will be the biggest project the strip has seen in the six-story redevelopment of the old QFC block.

Eventually, you have to think Key Bank’s part of 15th Ave E will also again be readied for a new apartments push, the old bank will need to be torn down, and Rosenberg’s art, demolished with it.

For now, the message stands and joins a flowering of new murals across Capitol Hill and a cluster of murals along 15th Ave including the Billy Davis work Sanctuary on the side of Walgreens and a Shepard Fairey design on a south-facing wall of the Hilltop Apartments.

You can find the new mural on Key Bank at 321 15th Ave E.

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