By Post-Intelligencer staff

The most prominent feature of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer building on the Seattle waterfront is the 18.5-ton globe atop the structure.

It perched on the newspaper's building at Sixth Avenue and Wall Street near the Seattle Center, which the P-I occupied for nearly 40 years, until 1986 when the P-I moved to a new building on the waterfront. The 30-foot steel globe consists of two hemispheres joined at the equator. Pacific Car and Foundry and Electrical Products Consolidated built the globe in 1948 at a cost of nearly $26,000.

The globe was inspired by a P-I promotional contest that sought designs for a new identifying symbol for the paper. The winner, Jakk Corsaw, suggested using a circular mural of the world, which professional designers turned into a three-dimensional globe. It was hoisted atop the building on Nov. 9, 1948.

The slogan, "It's in the P-I," is mounted on a raceway that revolves around the globe. Capital letters are 8 feet tall; small letters are 5 feet tall. The eagle that perches atop the globe is 18.5 feet tall.

The globe, which uses about 38 kilowatts per hour when fully lit, has been turned off several times during power shortages. It was shut down for six weeks in late 1952, which nearly led to the globe's untimely demise. P-I columnist Douglass Welch reported on Jan. 18, 1953:

"The wheels that carry the words, 'It's in the P-I,' are rubber-tired in hard, solid rubber. During their idleness they acquired a permanent 'set.' They became flat at the rail. When the sign was turned on, the flat wheels nearly shook the globe to pieces."

A quick-thinking worker saved the globe by turning off the mechanism that rotates the slogan. The manufacturer then replaced the tires.

The globe also was darkened for a day in 1973 and for two months in 1977, both drought years, to conserve energy.

Considering the popularity of the globe, the P-I had little choice but to pack it up and move it to the new building on Elliott Avenue. The P-I acted on the recommendation of a panel of art experts and citizen activists, who voted unanimously to retain the symbol.

The globe now rests on a pyramidal base conceived by Seattle artist Clair Colquitt, who felt the base should serve as an aesthetic transition between the modern office building and the whimsical neon symbol.