The Great Seattle Gargoyle Hunt – #1

Let’s divert ourselves with a game, shall we? I’ll post a photo of some creature, or more likely the head of some creature, carved as an architectural detail on one of the buildings here in downtown Seattle. You say where it is.

The rules of play are not stringent. You can use any means at your disposal. Obviously, any local or visiting contestant enjoys unlimited access to the streets themselves. This is the ideal way to play and it is my hope that anyone who lives or works or is staying in Seattle will go outside and start looking up.

But because many of you who are likely to stumble upon this divertissement do not raise your smoke here in Seattle, remote methods of search are allowed. You may use Google Street View and Bing’s oblique birds-eye views and any other similar mapping applications. You may use current and vintage photographs, your memory, other people’s memories (including lore handed down to you by the elders of your tribe), and even SWAGs.*

You may join up in groups to make the search more fun and to dilute the embarrassment when one of you walks into a parking meter.

Some will be ridiculously easy. Some will be impossibly hard. The first person who correctly identifies the name of the building — or the address of the building, or the intersection the building stands at, or even the location of the building in terms of nicknames or landmarks — wins. Wins in the intransitive sense, that is. You don’t win “s.t.” like a prize, you just win. Actually, okay, you win a limerick with your first name in it, that’s what you win.

I will post a photo (or several photos) of a gargoyle occasionally, regardless whether or not the last one has yet been identified. Use the comments to submit your answers. When someone submits the correct identification of a gargoyle, I will use the comments likewise to announce the winner for that photo. Otherwise, I will leave the photos unidentified forever and ever amen. Unless no one participates and I can’t stand it and have to name them.

We’re calling it a gargoyle hunt but most of these are gargoyles only in the most liberal sense of the word. Very few channel rainwater and fewer still take the shape of demons. Fact, most of them are lions with mouths as dry as Westerville, Ohio.

I may give clues for the harder ones if the humor takes me.

Remember to click the photos for larger views.

Ready? Okay, we’ll start with a dead easy one. Here is gargoyle numero uno.

Not lions, as it happens.

A slightly wider view with a different building in the background for environmental clues (as if you needed the help). This photo was originally going to be a "Just Look" entry, but I've commandeered it for the contest.

The game’s afoot! Tell everyone you know.

*silly wild-ass guess. It’s an engineering term.