Tanager Apartments

The site itself was a puzzle: a complex parcel with three street frontages and a sharp diagonal edge, nested between three existing buildings, each condition adding its own layer of complexity, from access and constructability to code.

Rather than clear the block of its character, we built around it. Beloved neighborhood establishments, including the music venue Chop Suey and the bars Diesel and Madison Pub, stayed open throughout construction, and we coordinated right-of-way improvements in close step with the public agencies delivering the new RapidRide G Line along Madison.

Timing added its own difficulty. Tanager broke ground in 2024 and delivered through one of the sharpest development slowdowns Seattle has seen in years, a stretch when rising costs and softening rents shelved most comparable projects.

It was among the very few major multifamily buildings to keep a crane in the air on Capitol Hill, reaching completion in 2026 as proof of both the team’s conviction and the enduring demand for well-designed, transit-connected housing.

Tanager is designed conceptually as a “background building,” quietly elegant rather than ostentatious, built to stand the test of time. Brick, prevalent across Capitol Hill, grounds it in its context, while a contemporary grey tone keeps it firmly of the moment. Instead of leaving blank party walls, three walls now carry large-scale murals created with local artists, celebrating the neighborhood’s deep roots in live music, food, and culture, and turning the building itself into a recognizable neighborhood landmark.

At the heart of the design is an idea rarely attempted at this density: bringing the forest floor into the middle of the city. The two towers rise around a central courtyard imagined as a native Pacific Northwest woodland. A boardwalk path threads through ferns, soft ground cover, and salvaged nurse stumps already teeming with new growth, giving interior-facing units a living view and offering every resident a genuine retreat from the street. Artificial boulders double as seating, and shade trees will fill in as they grow.

The journey continues upward to two distinct rooftop summits. The north tower deck channels a mountain meadow, with a turf lawn, gently rolling plantings, seating, and grilling stations. The south tower deck is an alpine campsite, complete with a rustic fire pit, a camp-style grill, a picnic table, and even a spot to pitch a small tent. Both open to sweeping views of downtown Seattle, the Olympic Mountains, and Mount Rainier.

Indoors, the concept holds. The amenity lounge opens directly onto the courtyard through a large overhead door, dissolving the line between inside and out. A coworking space enjoys storefront windows along the street, with interior glazing allowing natural light to pass into the fitness center. Unit finishes draw from the forms and textures of the Pacific Northwest, with hints of a vintage camping vibe in color and materiality, carrying the building’s central idea from the courtyard to the rooftops to the front door of every home.

Tanager’s 139 homes include affordable units delivered through the city’s Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) and Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) programs. Notably, the MHA units are provided on-site rather than through a fee-in-lieu, integrating affordable homes directly into the neighborhood.

At street level, new commercial spaces along East Union Street, 14th Avenue, and East Madison extend the neighborhood’s retail and restaurant life, keeping sidewalks activated well into the evening.

The project invests well past its property lines. New sidewalks, planters, ADA ramps, and street trees across all three frontages buffer pedestrians from the busy arterials while keeping the walkways wide, with room for window shopping, bike parking, and overflow from the commercial spaces.

Below-grade parking for 43 vehicles (ten with EV charging) and secure parking for 117 bikes, paired with the building’s location directly on the upgraded RapidRide G Line and improved bike infrastructure, lets residents rely far less on cars.

Sustainability runs deeper than location. The compact form is maximized for thermal efficiency and passive solar design, recessed windows in the thickened brick façade shade the interiors from high summer sun, and every home has its own energy recovery ventilator and heat pump.

The landscape is where innovation is most visible: rather than treating greenery as decoration, we built working Pacific Northwest ecologies into the architecture. The forest-floor courtyard and the two rooftop plant communities help manage stormwater, support pollinators and urban habitat, soften the heat-island effect, and give residents daily contact with nature, while roof areas not given over to amenity space or green roof carry solar panels.

Below grade, the site’s history as a former gas station and garage, closed roughly seventy years ago, called for careful environmental engineering. A fully sealed mitigation system isolates the building from the soil beneath it, and an active catalytic oxidation system works continuously to break down any remaining hydrocarbons, carrying any needed additional cleanup into the future rather than merely containing it.

A final detail rewards a closer look. The building’s namesake, the tanager, belongs to the second-largest family of birds, some 240 species strong. That abundance let every one of the 139 units be represented by its own species of tanager, each with an accurate illustration of that bird’s coloring on the unit’s entry signage.

It is a fitting emblem for a building that takes the two things Seattle loves most, its vibrant urban culture and its wild natural beauty, and refuses to choose between them. Residents step from a bustling nightlife corridor into a forested courtyard, then rise to rooftops that feel like alpine vistas with Mount Rainier on the horizon.

Firmly rooted in the culture of Capitol Hill and equally devoted to the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, Tanager proves that density done with craft and care can make a neighborhood more itself, not less.