Smith planned to build a 14-story structure in Seattle during a vacation there in 1909. Burns Lyman Smith, his son, persuaded him to instead construct a far larger tower to dethrone rival city Tacoma's National Realty Building as the highest west of the Mississippi River. The building process began in 1911. Smokey Jones, a giant bronze statue placed on top of the building in 1913, helped give the structure its name. Burns Lyman Smith returned from his vacation in Europe with ideas about steel framing and concrete construction that he brought back with him. He hired other architects to help design the building with him. The first stone was laid in April 1912 by Mayor Louis John Sullivan. The building was completed in early 1914 at a cost of $1 million ($12.5 million in 2007). It was officially opened on February 11, 1914 by President William Howard Taft. The Smith Tower is an example of Renaissance architecture. It is named for its three tiers of windows called "towers." Each window on the third floor is also called a "tower." There are 500 of them in all. The building is office space, but it has many other uses as well. It has been home to a radio station, a hotel, and a restaurant among others. The tower is 205 feet high and contains 3,074 square feet of floor space. That's less than one square foot per person in Washington State!