The Seattle landmark that's now an infamous parking garage

Pioneer Square has been buzzing with World Cup energy, but did you know the historic neighborhood was almost wiped off the map for parking lots? As FOX 13's Lauren Donovan shows us, one of Seattle's greatest eyesores accidentally saved the city's historic soul. Over the last month and with the World Cup here in town, I think we have seen people regionally and internationally discover and rediscover Pioneer Square. But would you believe it? There was a plan in the 60s and 70s to knock everything down and build parking lots. As Lisa Howard of the Alliance for Pioneer Square explains it, all this, the planters, bistro chairs. The buildings are so beautiful. Yeah, those too. They would have been poof, gone. But if you stroll down the brick pavers, you'll stumble upon one living example of what could have been. The now infamous sinking ship parking garage, formerly the site of a hotel, hailed as the grandest in all the Washington Territory. Forget the chain link, forget the concrete, it's the turn of the century. And imagine this, you are strolling down James Street, turning left into a grand hotel lobby. The story of Occidental Hotel begins in the frontier days of 1865. Here's how it looked during a memorial service for President Garfield. That building, like Garfield, didn't last long. Knocked down and replaced by another advertised as the largest hotel north of San Francisco. It was also built out of timber, and that is going to be a problem. See, just four years after opening Occidental Hotel No. 2, the Great Seattle Fire reduced it and nearly 30 city blocks to ash. Even still, Seattle wasn't done with it yet, and a third version rose from the rubble, renamed Seattle Hotel. It survived depressions, the gold rush, even housed the public library for a time. But in 1961, the wrecking ball came anyway. When the garage was taken down, that really spurred the preservation movement. The sacrificial lamb of sorts. It's a point in our history that actually saved the neighborhood. Occidental Square lives on as its namesake. Though, might I add, the historic-looking pedestrian mall, it isn't as old as it may appear. So Occidental Avenue used to be a street. That's right. It was not until the 1970s that this space was transformed for feet. It gives a lot more space for people to wander through the neighborhood. So next time you pop by to catch a match or grab a bite, Howard hopes you'll hold in your heart new perspective. Pioneer Square has so much soul, and it really needs to be loved and protected by all of Seattle. Reporting in Pioneer Square, Lauren Donovan, FOX 13 News.