Photograph of Joel M. Pritchard Building — Photograph by Jon Roanhaus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Washington State Library

Built in 1958 (modern architecture). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

From the record

“Pritchard Building at the Washington State Capitol campus in Olympia was built in 1957-1958 to house the Washington State Library, which had outgrown its previous location in the basement of the Washington Supreme Court's Temple of Justice. The building's architect, Paul Thiry who also designed the Century 21 Exposition complex in Seattle, used Modern design incorporating the Wilkeson sandstone quarried a few tens of miles away and used in the state capitol and other buildings.”
Wikipedia article Joel M. Pritchard Building, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 68 National Register listings published here for Thurston County · listed in 2015 · category: Building · built in 1958, modern architecture, by Paul Thiry.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building, 1 object as contributing to the listing.
Address. 415 15th Ave. SE., Olympia, 98501
When was it listed? August 2015
Category. building
Census division. Olympia
When was it built? 1958
Architectural style. modern architecture
Architect. Paul Thiry
National Register reference number. 15000501 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

90 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 90 fires within 5 miles of Washington State Library between 1992 and 2020, burning about 31 acres in total. None started naturally. 5 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	35
Recreation and ceremony	21
Debris and open burning	14
Equipment and vehicle use	5
Arson/incendiarism	5
Fireworks	4
Misuse of fire by a minor	2
Smoking	2
Railroad operations and maintenance	1
Other causes	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
8 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	I-5 TRAIL SE
8 September 2011	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	MALL FIRE
8 September 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
6 September 1993	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
5 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	TROSPER LAKE
30 September 1993	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
3 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	EXIT 108
3 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	ORGANIC

Every fire recorded in Thurston County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 20 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 20 workings within 5 miles of Washington State Library: 20 past producers. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Stone, Dimension. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Tumwater Sand & Gravel Pit	Stone, Dimension, Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Delphi Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Mottman Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Webber Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
29th Street Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Ames Huntly Road Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Capitol Lake Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Decatur St. Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Mottman Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Thurston County

Storms near this property

2 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Olympia, the town this property stands in, in 2 storm reports between 2001 and 2006: 1 funnel cloud, 1 heavy rain. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
January 2006	Heavy Rain	Olympia	$30,000	no account filed
May 2001	Funnel Cloud	Olympia	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Thurston County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Washington State Capitol Historic District	0.1 miles	1979
General Administration Building	0.3 miles	2007
Thurston County Courthouse	0.3 miles	1981
C. J. Lord Mansion	0.3 miles	1981
Henry McCleary House	0.4 miles	1978
South Capitol Neighborhood Historic District	0.4 miles	1991

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 15000501 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Thurston County	All 68 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.