Today in the PI:

Rainier Square, Fourth Avenue and University Street, is awful — a bleak terrace with a few token trees and the horrifying megahulk of Minoru Yamasaki’s Rainier Tower looming overhead on its wineglass-stem pedestal. No landscape architecture on Earth could redeem this space; even people who dig the tower’s structural engineering feel instinctive discomfort.

Three years ago in the Stranger:

[T]he plaza itself is a large empty expanse… and it’s carpeted. One massive white building looms over you, the Four Seasons Hotel is off to your left, and other buildings, big and small, line the edges of the park. You’re in a completely deserted park… and yet… you’re completely surrounded. Looking up at the windows of the buildings, not a soul can be seen looking back. You’re utterly alone. Anything could happen…. On each of my visits to the Rainier Square plaza, the park was infused with a palpable sense of evil. And while some would write me off as a loon, please consider the following: (1) How creepy is it to be completely isolated in a place where you shouldn’t be? Where signs of chaos—noise, traffic, goddamn people—should be everywhere, but aren’t?; and (2) How eerie would it feel to be standing in a large, open space, surrounded by hundreds—possibly thousands—of windows, and still feel that someone could kill you and no one would see it?

Evidently this plaza needs deeper consideration. Nor must we forget that its designer is the designer of the Twin Towers.