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April 17, 2024

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Amazon Spheres Guide: How to Visit, Hours, Tours, and More!

Did you know that there’s a tropical oasis in the middle of downtown Seattle?  Thanks to Amazon’s dedication to providing spaces that inspire creativity in their employees, Seattle has one of its most gorgeous pieces of architecture.  It’s a set of three conjoining glass spheres, and if you think the outside is a sight to behold, you should see it from the inside!  Twice a month, Amazon opens the building to the public and you can do just that.

Let’s dive into everything you need to know about visiting the Amazon Spheres. They have hours available for tours every other week, but if your trip to downtown Seattle doesn’t line up we’ll reveal how best to get a view of this beautiful oasis in the city.

The Background on the Amazon Spheres

The Amazon Spheres (also called the Seattle Spheres) began development in 2012. Until 2010, Amazon’s headquarters were in an old healthcare facility in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, but the company decided to build an urban campus sprawling across several blocks of downtown.

At the center of this campus, then-CEO Jeff Bezos wanted an eye-catching landmark. The main theme he landed on was a collaborative indoor garden. The Spheres would not only be an icon in downtown Seattle , but would also be a space for Amazon employees to connect with nature and spur innovation at its headquarters. After several design iterations, the Spheres design was approved in late 2013 and construction began in June 2015.

By December 2016, all glass panels had been installed on the Sphere ( there are 2,643 panes of glass! ), and work shifted to filling its interiors with plant life. Highlights of plant life include a 49-foot tree nicknamed “Rubi,” and a 4,000 square-foot “Living Wall” filled with a variety of plant life.

Where Are the Amazon Spheres Located?

The Amazon Spheres are located in a part of downtown Seattle known as the Denny Triangle. Their address is 2111 7th Ave, Seattle WA 98121. Near the Spheres, you’ll find several other office buildings that are part of Amazon’s downtown campus. If you’re looking for activities after visiting the Spheres, the surrounding blocks are filled with restaurants, coffee shops, and bars.

The Amazon Spheres are a 12-minute walk from Pike Place Market that should take about 10 to 15 minutes.

What’s Inside the Amazon Spheres

Inside, you will enjoy a balmy 72 degrees Fahrenheit and 60% humidity year-round.  Tropical plants from South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia fill various themed spaces.  Enjoy them while wandering pathways, from the many sitting areas, or staring up at the jaw-dropping four-story high plant wall.  My personal favorites were the wide variety of orchids, the interesting shapes of the pitcher plants, and the impressive size of the infamous corpse flower.  What you find can change from one visit to another, however.  Amazon has enormous greenhouses in the Seattle suburb of Woodinville, from which they regularly switch out the plants of the Spheres. 

The Amazon Spheres Tour and Hours of You Can Visit

Planning ahead for a visit to the Spheres is a must as space is limited and highly in demand.  The days reserved for general public visits are the first and third Saturdays of each month.  While free, tickets must be reserved in advance by visiting seattlespheres.com .   Reservations open 15 days prior to the day of your visit so mark your calendar because they go quickly!   

Now if you’re reading this and realized you’ve missed your window to get tickets during your visit to Seattle, not all is lost!  Amazon has their Understory Exhibit waiting for you.  It sits literally under the Amazon Spheres, requires no tickets or reservations, is free, and is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 am-6 pm.  This exhibit is about the concept on which the Spheres were created; bringing nature together with design, art, and technology.  Part art exhibit and part science exhibit, it’s both educational and interactive.  It’s worth a visit on its own or it’s a great addition to your day at the spheres.

Parking and Getting to the Amazon Spheres

The day of your visit, you can find parking conveniently located next to the spheres at 2021 7th Ave or use nearby public transportation.  The closest light rail station is Westlake Station, which is about an 8-minute walk from the Amazon Spheres. The Spheres are also located near the Westlake and 7th stop of the South Lake Union Streetcar.

Adults, remember your photo ID and leave pets and big bags at home; no bags over 12”x12” are allowed.

Foods in the Amazon Spheres

Do bring your appetite!  Inside the Spheres, you will find coffee and donuts courtesy of General Porpoise.  Operated by the same folks as Ballard favorite The Walrus and The Carpenter, these are not your typical donuts and are worth a trip all on their own.  They’re a filled donut similar in style to a Hawaiian Malasada and the flavor list is ever-changing.  There will be a rotating variety of local, in-season favorites such as Rainier cherry jam or huckleberry cream.  As well as year-round favorites like honey yogurt and vanilla custard. 

Restaurants Near the Amazon Spheres

If you’re looking to dine or grab a drink near the spheres, there are some fantastic options for taking in a view and enjoying top-notch food. A few of our favorites include:

• 2120: Features entrees ranging from sweet potato coconut curry to standards like prime New York steaks. 2120 sits on the corner of Amazon’s Day 1 building, which gives its outdoor patio a sweeping view of the Amazon Spheres.
• Willmott’s Ghost: A full-fledged restaurant inside the Spheres. The space inside Willmott’s Ghost is optimized for views of the plant life inside the Spheres. It’s cozy, with 49 seats total that include both tables and a curved bar with seating for 8. The food is Italian, with a mix of pizza, salads, and panini (for lunch). The dinner menu adds entrees that are generally between $30 to $50.
• Deep Dive: Would you believe that the Amazon Spheres have a speakeasy-style bar inside them? If that sounds like your idea of fun, make sure to check out Deep Dive. It’s styled after an upscale European bar and has drinks cocktails that change daily and an expansive wine menu. Foods are mostly lighter fare that includes Jamon Iberico, rockfish pave, and a hot dog with salmon caviar and cream cheese ( yes, seriously ).

One Last Tip: Our Favorite Place to Take a Photo

Make sure to travel all the way to the top floor or you’ll miss two favorite spots in the building.  There’s a great photo background with the Amazon Spheres logo on a wall of greens.  Plus, my favorite place in the whole building, the lounge chairs at the top of the dome.  As long as some sun is peeking through, it’s a great, warm spot to gather some vitamin D during the long Seattle winter!

Hi, I'm Ashleigh! Welcome to Seattle Travel, my little piece of beautiful PNW. This is home and I'm here to share all my experiences so visitors and locals alike can find the best experiences this part of the country has to offer. I started Seattle Travel in 2012 as a way to journal my experiences and over the years have been encouraged by family and friends to open up my adventures to everyone. I actively seek out the best food, activities, and day trips and give you a local perspective.  The Pacific Northwest is one of the most beautiful areas in the world and my goal is to let you explore it to the fullest. 

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Amazon Spheres: Your Guide to How to Get Inside & What to See

After two-and-a-half years of construction, Jeff Bezos dedicated The Spheres at Amazon’s downtown Seattle campus in late January. And Seattleites were excited with the news that they would finally be able to tour the uber-cool glass domes and virtual rain forest. However, due to some miscommunication and information about The Understory, a free exhibit that is housed underneath the giant terrarium, many anxious visitors have come only to be disappointed. But don’t fret, Seattle parents. We recently visited The Spheres and have the inside scoop on how you and your family can get inside. Read on!

Two Ways to Get Inside In order to visit The Spheres, it will take some planning and patience and one of two options. The first option is to sign up for a 90-minute guided tour of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. Tours take place on most Wednesdays from 10 a.m.–2 p.m. and include a visit to a few buildings such as the Doppler and Day 1 (two of the main Amazon office buildings), a trip through Amazon Go (a new partially automated grocery store that allows customers to make purchases without the need of a cashier) and some time in The Spheres. Tours are available for anyone ages six and older, however you must register online ahead of time. Psst…at the time of this writing, tours are filled up for the next month. Note: Amazon does offer a variation of its headquarters tour, one that is self-guided and can be done any time, but it does not offer access to the inside of The Spheres.

The second option is to visit during the special Open House  days. Two Saturdays per month, Amazon arranges unguided visits to The Spheres between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Again, you’ll have to register in advance and reservations open 30 days in advance of each date. There are no age restrictions for the Open House events, but all minors (ages 18 and under) must be accompanied by an adult at all times, and anyone age 18 and older must present a valid government issued identification card to the reception desk in order to enter.

First Things First While not the star of the event, The Understory does serve well as fairly decent pre-show. The 360-degree exhibit features some interactive displays, including a super-cool miniature model of the building, a sample of the “living walls” made from a variety of plants and a grouping of floor-to-ceiling video monitors showing incredible footage of the things you’ll see up above. The Understory is open Mon.-Sat. from 10 a.m.–8 p.m. and Sun. from 11 a.m.–7 p.m.

What You’ll Find Inside The Spheres The 90-foot-tall biosphere, which looks like three large soap bubbles, contains 2,643 rounded glass panels and is home to over 40,000 plants from over 30 countries. Here, you’ll find grouping of tables and chairs in various nooks and out in the open. Psst…it’s estimated that the complex can seat 800 people at one time!

There are wonderful sights around every corner inside the four-level building. As you walk around, you’ll find cascading waterfalls, a fernery and short pathways through the foliage. The lower level contains an Old World Garden with plants from Africa and Asia and a New World Garden that features plants from the Americas including the crown jewel, Rubi, a 36,000-pound fichus tree. The 49-year old tree was transplanted from California where it had lived since 1969. Above that, you’ll find the “birdcage,” a seating area that sits alongside a wraparound wooden walkway and gives the sensation that you are walking on a rope bridge.

On the 6 th  Ave. side of The Spheres is where you’ll find the Living Wall. The 60-foot wall contains 200 plant species and can be seen on all four levels. The wall also includes a ventilation system and several misters that spray the plants every so often.

Where to Nosh For those needing a snack, doughnuts and coffee can be found on Open House days on the second level at The Spheres’ resident cafe,  General Porpoise . The doughnut shop, created by James Beard award-winning chef Renee Erickson in 2016, serves delish doughnuts filled with seasonal jams, jellies, curds, custards and creams as well as top quality coffees from multiple roasters and house-made gelato.

Before You Go As to be expected, Amazon has a few rules when visiting The Spheres. You’ll be asked to remain on the walkways at all times and not touch the plant life. No outside food or drink, strollers or weapons of any kind are allowed inside The Spheres and all bags must not be larger than 12”x12”. Our best advice? Put your babe in his front pack carrier and leave your bulky diaper bag in the car. And don’t bundle up either. The inside temperature hovers right around 72 degrees, with 60 percent humidity.

The Spheres 2111 7 th Ave. Seattle, Wa 98121 Online: seattlespheres.com

Have you seen the inside of The Spheres? Planning to go soon?  Tell us about your experience in the comments below.

—Jeffrey Totey (all photos courtesy of the writer)

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See the Offices Where Employees Can Work in a Tree House

Online retailer Amazon's new building, the Spheres, highlights the value the tech industry places on exposure to nature and creative spaces.

Seattle — The enormous orbs are constructed of glass pentagons held together with miles of steel and rebar but packed with lush tropical plant life, including epiphytes, rare begonias and a rhododendron normally only found at the top of a single mountain in the Philippines.

The Spheres, the new three-domed jungle of meeting and work space at the foot of Amazon’s headquarters in downtown Seattle, is both unlike any other office in the world—and yet similar to other spaces in the tech industry that showcase cutting-edge design.

From Apple’s new circular spaceship campus in Cupertino, California, to Facebook’s Frank Gehry-designed headquarters with its nine-acre rooftop park complete with teepee swing, to the coming Googleplex with its glass tent-like buildings, these innovators have been stepping out of cyberland to rethink workplaces in the brick-and-mortar world. And each seems to have found value in trying to expose employees to more of the wild.

“Because we are an urban campus, one thing that is missing is a link to nature,” says Amazon's real estate chief, John Schoettler.

So the company brought nature to its employees.

Tree House Meetings

Amazon wants the Spheres to become as central to the city’s architectural identity as the 11-story, Rem Koolhaas-designed Seattle downtown library , the fluid, futuristic Museum of Pop Culture , built by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and, of course, the Space Needle , the flying-saucer-on-stilts erected for the 1962 World's Fair that symbolizes the Seattle skyline.

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Certainly, the project is an architectural marvel. The glass is designed to let in light for photosynthesis, but keep out summer heat. Interior lighting systems were inspired by the region’s newest growth industry—legal cannabis—and dangling digital monitors track how much light the plants are getting. Amazon’s campus sits across the street from a 34-story telecommunications data center that gives off enormous amounts of heat from computer and server hardware. Now they’ve tapped into it. Partnering with the owners of that building, Amazon pipes in waste energy , cycles it through heat-reclaiming chillers, and uses that to help heat its offices. The entire block, which includes Amazon’s 37-story headquarters, was recognized for sustainable practices with a green building certification, the company says. (See what makes a green building .)

From the outset, Amazon—set in a city surrounded by water, mountains, and dark gothic Douglas fir forests—wanted the Spheres to focus on flora.

“We liked a lot of the elements of the old Victorian conservatories,” Schoettler says. “We thought, What would Kew Gardens look like if it were being built today?”

Just inside the main entrance to the Spheres, which celebrates its grand opening this week, Amazon visitors face the largest of its living walls of flora, a breathtaking four-story vertical maze of 25,000 plants. The wall includes several hundred species, from cliff-dwelling orchids to understory ferns. They spring from mesh, with cooler-weather species along the bottom and sun-loving plants near the upper reaches, just below the 90-foot top of the glass dome.

A few feet away, workers pass a rainforest paludarium, an enclosed glass display of plants and freshwater fish typically found on the flooded forest floors of one particular watershed in the Amazon. Elsewhere, a similar vivarium includes plant life from Borneo shrouded in cloud-forest mist, while wall-mounted terrariums around the building will rotate special plant collections. Above towers a nearly 60-foot rusty fig, trucked in 1,200-miles from California. Equatorial trees and plants abound, from a pink lantern plant to a cocoa tree to a fern expected to eventually stretch fifteen feet across a walkway. Another living wall boasts a slew of carnivorous foliage, including insect-nabbing pitcher plants.

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This place is not a museum or conference center, nor will it be open to the public. It’s an extension of Amazon’s workspace, another hiring lure in the ultra-competitive tech world. In fact, it can only hold roughly 800 of the city’s 40,000 Amazon employees at a time, and officials say they already have a waiting list of workers who want to use this space.

But the Spheres is also a means to encourage creativity and invention, says Ron Gagliardo, Amazon’s lead horticulturalist on the project. There are no cubicles or offices, only open gathering spaces that include waterfalls or a cocoon of creeping vines. Another meeting spot is a wooden tree house high above the canopy. It smells like a lush and fragrant forest, feels like a greenhouse kept cool for visitors, and looks like an elaborate futuristic pea patch planted aboard a gleaming space shuttle.

“It’s a place to meet a colleague, bring a recruit, hold a team meeting,” Gagliardo says. “It’s a place to come and think a little differently.”

Nature ‘Is Not Optional’

This embrace of biophilia—the idea that humans have an innate desire to connect with nature—should not come as much of a surprise. Experts increasingly suggest that access to nature can improve brain function and creativity, and increase problem-solving. And few industries seek a creative edge as competitively as tech.

Timothy Beatley , a professor of sustainable communities at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture and a specialist in biophilic urban planning, says some industries are beginning to figure out that humans need nature—“it's not optional.”

“Nature is something we absolutely need to lead happy, healthy, meaningful lives,” Beatley says. “We need to overcome this sense that you should just get out in nature once or twice a year on a holiday.” (Read about Singapore , the "garden city.")

Research increasingly shows, Beatley says, that there may even be links between nature—ranging from plants and real sunlight, to natural ventilation and simply being outside—and improved physical and mental health. (Read “ This Is Your Brain on Nature .”)

“Medical people are cautious—they don't see causality, but there is a lot of correlation between nature and health,” Beatley says. “It calms us, lowers blood pressure, we perform better on cognitive tests, think more clearly, we’re more likely to be generous, to be more cooperative, to think more long term. And there’s a lot of emerging evidence about increases in worker productivity.”

The latter was not lost on Amazon, and the company is hardly alone. Google’s new campus plans include tent-like coverings that help bring in natural light, supporting “trees, landscaping, cafes, and bike paths weaving through these structures” it hopes will “ blur the distinction between our buildings and nature .” Apple moved parking underground to create tree-rich paths for “walking meetings.” Facebook’s roof boasts a small trail system.

But that’s not to say that Amazon designers hit the books to design a building with specific health outcomes in mind. Officials say they weren’t thinking quite so proscriptively.

“To be perfectly honest we didn’t do a tremendous amount of research,” Schoettler says. “We just wanted the link to nature that was missing in the traditional work environment.”

And, says Beatley, sometimes that’s enough.

“Exactly how much you need is still a hard thing to say,” Beatley says. “But there’s no doubt that the more we can do the better.”

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Inside HQ1: The Coolest Features at Amazon’s Seattle Headquarters

If you’re standing on a street corner in South Lake Union or Belltown, chances are you’re standing in front of an Amazon office building. You’ll be surrounded by blue badges but, if asked, you might struggle to point out the exact building where the people wearing them work.

Even as it has transformed a once-sleepy neighborhood of warehouses and shipyards into a buzzing technology hub, Amazon prefers to blend into its surroundings wherever possible. The now-famous Spheres are a rare architectural showpiece from a company that prefers to operate under the radar, and even the central office buildings arranged around the Spheres at Amazon ground zero — dubbed Day 1, Doppler and Meeting Center — are pretty inconspicuous. At least, that’s how they look from the outside.

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It’s been a big year for Amazon. The company released a truckload of new Alexa skills and integrations, opened more Amazon Go locations across the country and brought its AWS technology to several large government departments.

Where is Amazon Located in Seattle?

Oh, and there was that whole HQ2 saga.

So with all that focus on the company’s future plans, we thought we’d take a peek inside the engine room of a business that employs over 45,000 Seattleites. Here are some of the coolest features of Amazon’s hometown headquarters.

Common Areas

Cool features: Startup staples, rotating art displays, themed buildings and rooms, independent local vendors, and more dogs than you can shake a blue badge at.

Tell us more: We started off in the Day 1 building, so named for founder Jeff Bezos’ “never rest on your laurels” startup philosophy that has become a kind of mantra at the company. Bezos keeps an office in Day 1, and his sayings — which employees affectionately refer to as “Jeff Quotes” — adorn the walls.

There are loads of open common areas speckled throughout Amazon’s office complexes. We’re told that the company tries to avoid filling workers’ days with meetings where it can, giving many the freedom to migrate between offices and common workspaces throughout the day — and spend relatively little time at their desks.

We visited one of those common rooms on Day 1’s 16th floor, which is decked out with a rotating art display and the usual tech favorites: foosball, shuffleboard and the unmistakable tack-click-tack of a product manager challenging a UX designer’s ping pong supremacy.

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Over in Doppler — named after the Amazon Echo’s R&D code name — there are six eateries, a coffee stand, video game lab, art studio and a market. The company sees itself as a part of the surrounding community, which is why you often don’t know that you’re walking past an Amazon building, even though there are over 40 of them in central Seattle alone. This, coupled with the company’s self-image as an important source of revenue for small businesses, is why it has filled its common spaces with independent coffee shops, food vendors and marketplaces. And unlike other tech giants like Google and Facebook, which provide free on-campus meals for employees, Amazon encourages its workers to venture out into the neighborhood to find lunch.

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Doppler is full of small flourishes showcasing some element of the company’s often-quirky company culture. There’s a small Harry Potter-themed library room (they started as a bookseller, after all) and a so-called “Post Alley” designed to be a slightly more hygenic version of Pike Place’s gum wall. A large common workspace is decorated with dividers that, upon closer inspection, are made from the rollers found under conveyor belts at the company’s fulfillment centers.

Cool features: Small teams, few meetings, stylish surrounding and dogs.

Details: The migratory nature of an average Amazon employee’s day means the offices themselves tend to be more peaceful than your average white collar workspace — at least, that’s based on what we saw. The company tries to avoid siloing its departments off into different buildings, mixing teams among one another.

By the way: Amazon tends to keep those teams small enough to be fed on two pizzas. The so-called “two pizza rule” has become company lore.

And then, of course, there are the dogs. Anyone who has watched the hordes of pampered pooches mincing the streets of South Lake Union or scampering in the public dog park by the Spheres knows that dogs are an important element of Amazon’s culture. The company’s first office dog was a corgi named Rufus — perhaps explaining that breed’s enduring popularity in Seattle today — whose paws launched some of Amazon’s first webpages and software products. Today, Rufus is immortalized with a building named in his honor in South Lake Union, along with numerous shrines of artwork and tennis balls throughout various offices.

In addition to the public dog park between Day 1 and the Spheres, Amazon’s dogs can also exercise at an employee-only park suspended 17 stories above 7th Avenue. Around 6,000 dogs keep Amazon’s tens of thousands of employees company every single day.

Cool features: Talks with your favorite creatives, pre-screenings of Amazon content.

Details: Meeting Center is a squat building next to Doppler that fulfills a large company’s traditional needs, like conferences and all-hands meetings, as well as talks with some of the biggest names in film and literature.

Amazon started out as an online marketplace for books, and literature runs pretty deep at the company. Authors regularly make pilgrimages out to Amazon to give exclusive talks for employees — first to sign up gets a seat — and now that the company has started creating its own original movies and TV shows, actors and filmmakers are starting to appear, too. What’s more, Amazon often rents out entire movie theaters around Seattle to put on advance screenings of its original shows and movies for its team. And in one hallway, you’ll find a costume worn by Rachel Brosnahan in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

The Spheres

Cool features: Well, they’re giant transparent spheres housing an indoor rainforest in the middle of the city. Every feature is a cool feature.

Details: The Amazon Spheres have the feel of a tourist attraction, with columns of snap-happy corporate visitors and blue-shirted guides whose job it is to answer questions like “What’s the temperature in here?” “How many feet of dirt under that big tree?” and “Where are the restrooms?” (Answers: 72 degrees, up to four feet and downstairs.) The building is Amazon’s main architectural contribution to the city of Seattle, a marvel of engineering and horticulture. Over 40,000 plants live in three interlocking balls four stories tall, a jungle handpicked from the cloud forest regions of over 30 countries.

While the Spheres are becoming an essential stop on the Seattle tourist trail, Amazon has guarded the building to maintain it as a tranquil workspace for its employees. While the exotic plants — including a 55-foot-tall Port Jackson fig from Australia named Rubi, tubs of aquatic plant life and a huge living wall of ferns and other climbers — breathe a sense of calm into the place, the Spheres hum with the conversation-and-keystrokes noise of Amazon getting its work done.

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Visiting Amazon in Seattle

Seattle is known for being Amazon Headquarters, and there are some fun Amazon experiences to be had in the city. We visited Seattle during our family gap year and got to have some Amazon fun!

How to Visit Amazon in Seattle

There are lots of buildings in Seattle that house Amazon’s offices, but I’m going to focus on the places that anyone can go visit. Spoiler- these are the most fun places anyway!

Amazon Spheres

The Amazon Spheres are gorgeous to look at and cool to learn about. They house a living garden as well as offices for employees!

The Spheres are open to visitors by reservation on the first and third Saturday of each month. But if you can’t make it then, not to worry! There is a little museum inside the Spheres, called Understory , that anybody can visit! It’s open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 am–6 pm. I stumbled upon this one day when I was exploring on my own, and I took the whole family back on our next visit.

Understory has interactive exhibits where you can learn about how the spheres were built, the living plants inside, and how Amazon is working to improve its neighborhood. It’s how we learned about the banana stand (more on that below!).

Kids can build a city with blocks in one area and put model spheres together in another. These kept the younger ones entertained while we took a look around.

There’s a big screen that periodically shows informational videos about the Spheres, and you can hear the audio by standing in one of the lighted spots. Walk out of the circle and it’s silent!

I definitely recommend a visit to the Amazon Spheres. Be sure to go when you can visit Understory!

Just down the block from the Amazon Spheres is an Amazon Go store. This is like a mini grocery/convenience store, with mostly food products, including ready-to-eat meals. The cool thing about the store is that you don’t check out!

Imagine going to the grocery store, loading up your cart, and then just walking out the exit. That’s how it works at Amazon Go! No more hassle of taking everything out to get it scanned, paying, and then putting everything back in your cart.

Before entering, you have to download the Amazon Go app and enter in credit card information. Then, you scan the app to enter, and anything you take off the shelf is added to your virtual cart. If you replace the item, it’s taken out of your cart. When you exit, anything you take with you gets charged to your card! This is definitely the future of grocery shopping, and I can’t wait.

We grabbed some food for our lunch and enjoyed a little picnic outside by the Spheres.

As of Summer 2023, you can find Amazon Go stores in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, as well as Seattle, or visit Amazon Fresh in London . If you end up near one, definitely check it out!

Amazon Banana Stand

If you’re in town on a weekday, make sure to stop by the Amazon Banana Stand! We always visited on weekends, so we missed out, but we learned about the stand at the Spheres.

Amazon has two banana stands now, open every weekday from 8 am–3:30 pm, and bananas are free! That’s it. Stop by, say hi to the “banistas,” and grab a banana. That’s pretty much the whole story!

Amazon is a huge part of the city of Seattle, so if these places interest you at all, be sure to stop by and visit when you’re there!

Read about our other Seattle adventures with kids !

Pin it if you love it!

Family Travel Expert

Megan Tenney traveled full-time for four years with her husband and four children. She's visited 49 of the United States, backpacked across Europe, and spent some time in Canada, Mexico, Asia, and the Caribbean. Megan is the owner and author of Family Gap Year Guide , where she shares stories and tips from her family travel adventures and teaches other families how they can take life on the road!

My boyfriend and I are visiting Seattle in February next year and this article got me way more excited! I tried to find more information on the HQ tours but only found links to a virtual tour.

I was wondering if you could tells where to go for the guided tour for Thursday’s at 10am or 2pm. I didn’t see online that there was any reservation needed… at least that I know of.

Hi Summer! I’m seeing the same thing you are – just the virtual tour. I wonder if they shut down the in-person tours because of the pandemic and haven’t started them back up again. I’d keep checking as you get closer to your trip, or maybe try contacting them to ask. Hope you have an awesome time!

Hello, I don’t see any information in Amazon website like “Amazon offers a guided 90-minute tour of their Seattle campus”? We are visiting Seattle and hope it’s true.

Looks like I need to update this post because I don’t think Amazon is offering the guided HQ tours anymore. You can visit the Spheres by reservation during the first and third Saturday of each month, and you can visit Understory from 10am-6pm Tuesday-Saturday.

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Amazon in Seattle: The Role of Business in Causing and Solving a Housing Crisis

What role should business play in solving societal issues that it helps to create?

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In 2020, Amazon built a shelter for women and families experiencing houselessness on its campus in Seattle, Washington. The shelter was operated in partnership with a nonprofit organization known as Mary’s Place and was designed to address what had become an urgent problem for Seattle and many other wealthy American cities, where communities were being displaced by a lack of affordable housing.

Amazon’s partnership with Mary’s Place was an experiment in addressing this problem at its core, using some of the firm’s own resources to fund living space for unhoused families. But critics argued that Amazon’s apparent charity was misplaced because the company and other tech giants were actually making the problem worse. Instead, they argued, government and nonprofits should solve these societal issues.

Harvard Business School professors Debora Spar and Paul Healy explore the role business plays in causing and addressing the larger problem of unhoused communities in American cities in the case, “ Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary’s Place .”

BRIAN KENNY: When the Klondike Gold Rush swept the nation in 1896, the tiny lumber town of Seattle became a bustling city almost overnight. On the heels of the Gold Rush came a shipbuilding boom, followed by a post-war bust and the great depression. Then Boeing to the rescue, as Seattle became the epicenter of aircraft manufacturing for the US forces in World War II. Decades later, Boeing passed the baton to Microsoft, and Seattle found itself at center stage for the burgeoning tech boom. In the ensuing years, Seattle would become the launch pad for other global brands like Starbucks and Nordstrom’s. But the biggest by far is Amazon. Since launching in 1994, Amazon has invested four and a half billion dollars in the city where it currently employs 55,000 people.Most cities would love to have an Amazon in their midst, but as the Gold Rush taught us all those years ago, not all the glitters is gold. Today on Cold Call, we welcome professors Paul Healy and Debora Spar to discuss their case, “Hitting Home, Amazon and Mary’s Place.” I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and this is Cold Call on the HBR podcast network. Paul Healy’s research covers a range of topics including white-collar crime, governance, business ethics, and financial analysis. Debora Spar studies issues of gender and technology and the interplay between technological change and broader social structures. Welcome both. It’s great to have both of you here.

DEBORA SPAR: It’s a great pleasure. Thanks.

PAUL HEALY: Thank you, Brian.

BRIAN KENNY: And Paul, thank you for joining us from Barcelona. This is good of you to give us your time. Paul, I’m going to ask you to kick us off here by telling us what the central issue is in the case and what your cold call will be. I know you haven’t taught the case yet, but when you have an opportunity to teach it in class, how are you thinking of starting the conversation?

PAUL HEALY: So, my interest in the case was exposing our students to the question of homelessness in the country and around this question of equity that you raised. My sense is that most of our students haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it. And so, I thought that a case like this will be a great way for them to start to think about what their responsibilities are, how do companies they work for, what are their responsibilities and really how do we as a society address this problem, this homelessness that seems to be so intractable in the United States.

So, what would I ask? I think I might start actually by asking students, does anyone know someone who has been homeless at some point in their life? And then I think I would really want to start by digging into this question, why is homelessness such an intractable problem in the United States? And get the students to start thinking about that question, what causes it? Why is it we don’t seem to be able to get our hands around solving it?

BRIAN KENNY: Deb, let me turn to you for a moment and ask, you and Paul wrote this case together. I’m wondering why did you decide to write it? Why was it important to you to pick up this topic?

DEBORA SPAR: Well, it’s so interesting now because we wrote it a couple of years ago and right around the same time, Paul and I were also working together on what has become a new required course in the first year curriculum on the social purpose of the firm. What that course is really about is probing the boundaries between the firm and the state. So, what is the appropriate role of the firm in society and what kind of assets do firms bring to attack societal problems, and what is the appropriate role of the state? And I think this case even more so than I would’ve imagined at the beginning, it hits that nail right on the head because I think my opening question would be something, and I would probably frame it more cynically than Paul because he’s a less cynical person than I am. I would probably ask something like, “Why in heaven’s name is Amazon working on homelessness?” Which historically has been an issue that communities worried about and churches worried about and governments worried about. But you don’t think of a delivery company being involved in homelessness. So, I think it really blows open this issue of: what should firms be doing and how should we as citizens and consumers, how should we think about a company like Amazon when it gets involved in a problem like homelessness?

BRIAN KENNY: Paul, you talked about the intractability of homelessness in the United States, and I’m wondering if you can just give us a little bit more of view into what that situation looks like. We have by far the largest economy in the world. It would seem that we shouldn’t have anybody who’s homeless, but we do. We have a lot of homeless. Can you talk a little bit about that?

PAUL HEALY: So just as a bit of context here, Seattle has the third most homeless people in the country behind Los Angeles, and it’s a much smaller city, obviously. And if you look at the people that are homeless, a substantial portion of them are families with children. So, why does it happen? Well, I think that we don’t have much of a social safety net in the United States. It’s just not part of our norm, our infrastructure. And then I think there’s a lot of things that sort of go into making it the perfect storm. We deregulated mental health many years ago and we said we were going to do so, and we were going to provide support services for the people with mental health problems. And we really never did.

In large cities, the cost of housing has really exploded as companies like Amazon, and I’m not blaming Amazon, but one consequence of the tech boom and the boom in cities is that the price of housing in large cities has really escalated dramatically. And that’s really priced out a lot of low-income people. And then on top of that, I think that we haven’t had the willingness–people living in inner cities–to really change zoning laws to lead to more housing and the building, creation of more housing and low-income housing or just regular housing in cities and suburbs. And then I think that the last piece is also important, and that is that people who are homeless really don’t have a political voice. They’re not the sort of people with political power. And so, their problems get largely sidelined unless, somehow they become more mainstream.

BRIAN KENNY: But what role should government be playing? Shouldn’t they be more involved in this situation?

DEBORA SPAR: Homelessness is a particularly complicated problem. It’s a problem of health, it’s a problem of real estate, it’s a problem of policing. It’s a problem sadly, of drug over usage. And for sure one would like government to be a big part of it as it is in many other countries in Europe, not that they’re wonderful places, but you tend to have more low-income housing that’s heavily subsidized. But it’s not clear that government alone can solve the problem. But apologies if this is jumping ahead a little bit, in order for government to solve the problem, part of what they have to do is change zoning laws, which are running into the societal issues that Paul was talking about. But part of what they have to do is raise taxes or they have to generate the revenue because building housing and building social services is expensive. And I think that’s, again, one of these complicated ironies in the case is that on the one hand, Amazon and some of the other companies are stepping up to the plate to give a lot of charitable monies to address homelessness, but they’re fighting against the taxes which would enable the government to address homelessness. There are no magic wands here. The government is going to have to have money in order to address the problem.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, and we’re going to talk about that, how they’re using their leverage in ways that would benefit them. But at the same time, there’s a lot of irony in the whole story. Amazon has transformed Seattle, obviously I alluded to that in the introduction in ways good and bad. And I remember a few years ago they had a sweepstakes where they were going to open up a new headquarters in the US and they had mayors all over the United States clamoring to have Amazon located there. What would you tell a mayor who was thinking about having Amazon relocate to their city?

DEBORA SPAR: Well, ironically, one of my friends was the deputy mayor and was deeply involved in this. And even while she was going through it, I mean it is this double-edged sword because if you’re a mayor, if you’re a community leader, you kind of have to want this investment because it brings… I forget how many tens of thousands of jobs, it’s going to drive up property values and it’s going to bring more espresso bars to a community. By the same token, it is going to make the cost of living in these cities way more expensive, exactly has happened in the case of Seattle. It’s going to increase traffic congestion, it’s going to increase demand for the public schools. So, it’s one of these birds, if you catch it, you’re then left with a lot of problems. But nevertheless, as we saw every mayor in the country was racing after that.

BRIAN KENNY: Sure. Of course. Paul, talk a little bit more about Seattle. I’m wondering what the economics are of living in the city of Seattle. What do you need to earn?

PAUL HEALY: I’m not sure exactly what you need to earn, Brian, but I know it’s a lot more than the minimum wage. And I think the average Amazon worker is earning $110,000 a year, and the average other worker is earning more like $55,000 a year, which by US standards that’s probably enough to get by or just get by in a city like Seattle or if you’ve got a family, it may not be enough to get by. There are certainly plenty of people who aren’t making that, and for them, that’s going to make it very difficult to rent a home or rent an apartment in Seattle.

BRIAN KENNY: So, did Amazon see themselves in any way as being the cause of the problem here? Did they come to the table, I guess willingly or were they kind of pushed into this role? What’s the dynamic there?

DEBORA SPAR: Well, I think my sense, and Paul may have a different one, but I think it’s very human. People rarely see themselves as causing problems, particularly when there are problems that are multifactorial. Nobody caused, no single entity caused the problem of homelessness. It was a failure or complications on so many levels. So, I don’t think Amazon saw themselves in any way as the cause, I think they did see themselves and to their credit as being part of the solution, but the solution they chose was a charitable one rather than a… How should we call it, a governmental or a contribution to society-based one. But I don’t know, Paul may have a different sense of that.

PAUL HEALY: I think that also, Deb, picking up on that, oftentimes companies, and I suspect… I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that many people in Amazon would say to themselves that the government actually hasn’t proved that they can solve this problem. And the government’s not proven to be very effective in solving this problem. And we need the private sector to provide a little bit of support and to help do it. And I think that they’re probably learning over time that it’s a much more intractable problem than they had thought and that they’re no more effective at doing it than the government.

DEBORA SPAR: And if I could, I want to go back to the example that Paul raised earlier about what’s happened to Whole Foods in San Francisco because I think it touches on a broader problem. And we saw this recently at an event we held in Latin America, where for many decades the wealthy industrialists in Latin America and elsewhere have said issues like economic inequality, they’re not our issue. Our job as business people is to generate growth, generate jobs, and the government takes care of redistribution. But that view in Latin America, and I suspect in Seattle and San Francisco, is starting to change because when the problems of inequity become so severe that you’re closing your stores and your employees don’t want to come to work, it becomes part of not even the responsibility of the corporation, but it becomes part of its business. And again, I think that’s what this case… All good cases are a bit extreme examples of a problem. I think Seattle and San Francisco are the extreme examples of a broader problem we’re seeing.

PAUL HEALY: And I think on top of that, I think you are also seeing employees of many companies saying, “We’re not happy, we’re not comfortable. This isn’t the community we want to be part of.” And so, that puts more pressure on the company to say, “Well, how do we fix this problem? How do we make this better?” Because we want to attract the best people. And if we’re now no longer as an attractive location because of homelessness in our community, we need to fix that or at least be seen as contributing to fixing it.

BRIAN KENNY: So, what was Amazon’s way to fix this? We haven’t talked about Mary’s Place. That’s obviously a central part of the story as well. What is Mary’s Place and how has Amazon engaged with them?

DEBORA SPAR: Well, Mary’s Place is a wonderful, fairly traditional example of a nonprofit approach to a social problem. So, Mary’s Place was started by a woman who had experienced poverty and homelessness in her youth and had wanted to address that for other people. And so, it’s a classic kind of church-basement-based nonprofit that from everything we know has done a great job, has built hundreds of beds and taken care of hundreds of people, primarily women and children. And so, they were a great partner for a company like Amazon that wanted to do good. And it gave Amazon the ability, not initially to build a homeless shelter themselves, that’s not their business, but to support an organization that was already in that business. So, pretty straightforward in that regard.

BRIAN KENNY: Okay. So how are they working together? I guess, I’m trying to get a more vivid picture of how involved is Amazon in the day-to-day operations of Mary’s Place.

PAUL HEALY: So, Amazon doesn’t get involved in the day-to-day. But what Amazon did was it built a homeless facility that Mary’s Place operates and they built it within its campus. So, it’s not part of the corporate headquarter building, but it’s within the campus. You build a homeless shelter that Mary’s Place operates for a hundred people or something like that, a couple hundred people.

BRIAN KENNY: So, that’s an interesting approach though. Why would they choose to build it right in their midst?

PAUL HEALY: I don’t know the answer to that to be quite honest, but I think it does demonstrate their commitment and it makes it more visible to people that they’re doing something.

DEBORA SPAR: And I think that’s exactly right. And I think also, even though Amazon is not in the social services business, they’re kind of in the real estate business and they were building, they had some additional space. It was probably… We don’t have the numbers. It’s probably a little bit more economically efficient if you’re already putting up a building to put up an adjacent building. So, I think it was more than a sort of traditional but a sensible way for them to contribute to what was still a separately operated nonprofit organization.

BRIAN KENNY: And the case, to your point, Paul earlier, the case does mention that employees would like to have that proximity to see this work unfolding in front of them. It makes them feel like the problem is being addressed to some extent. And so, that’s also another benefit for it. Let’s get back to the tax issue that you mentioned earlier, and the ability of a firm like Amazon to influence policy. We know that firms are doing this all the time. They’ve got lobbyists, there’s always a presence at the federal, state and probably local levels by these firms. Can you describe a little bit about the dynamic with the tax situation in Seattle?

DEBORA SPAR: Yeah, so I mean it’s a fairly classic case of what happens in civic arguments. So very few companies ever want to pay more taxes. It’s just not part of the rule book. And governments tend to want to tax corporations because they need and want the revenue. And particularly in a place like Seattle, where you’ve had this influx of not only very wealthy corporations, but very visible, very well-known corporations, it’s hard to imagine any city government not wanting to get more money from these corporations. And it’s not hard to imagine corporations like Amazon not wanting to pay it.

But I think what the case tries to tease out without calling anyone villainous in this story, because I don’t think anybody is, is that there is an irony that Amazon is anxious to spend the same money on philanthropy, that they’re fighting tooth and nail not to pay in taxes. Now maybe they’re making a conscious, explicit decision that we trust the nonprofit provider more than we trust the city government. And that may be a valid decision. It’s also one that I think we as citizens should be worried about. Because we do have a system that’s set up for governments to provide social services. And if we’re going to choose a model that’s instead a combination of for-profits and nonprofits, it’s a very different model that I’m not sure we as a country have sort of bought into.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, yeah. Could they apply the same kind of leverage though to the tax situation? Could they redirect that energy into saying, “Hey, we want to change the housing policy? What can we do to work together?”

DEBORA SPAR: I think they probably could. And I think the case touches a little bit that some of the other companies in the area, particularly Microsoft, seem to have been playing that route, actually trying to work with the government to help raise taxes and to build better kind of housing. But again, there’s no perfect solution here.

BRIAN KENNY: Right, right. We’ve talked a lot about Amazon. We haven’t talked specifically about Jeff Bezos, but the case does mention Jeff Bezos and the way that he started to engage in this. Paul, can you describe that a little bit?

PAUL HEALY: We wrote this as a field case, so I don’t have any deep insight as to what Jeff Bezos was thinking about this, but I’m sure given his centrality to the company that he was involved in both the lobbying of the town government, the local government to avoid the taxes, but also seeing this perhaps as a way of trying to solve the problem. So, I am sure his fingerprints are on that.

DEBORA SPAR: And this too, and again, repeating Paul, we don’t know anything about Jeff’s personal motives here, but if you look at it from the sort of macro level as I tend to do, I think this is an issue that deserves attention because where we are in society right now is that we kind of seem to think it’s okay for people like Bezos and name your other favorite billionaire to generate billions and billions of dollars and then give it away in philanthropy, which of course is fun, right? And you get to be a hero, you make all that money and Bezos has to give away all… Nobody can spend as much money as he has, but that’s a very different model than the one we had perhaps in the 1950s where companies paid more in taxes, the CEOs made less and they did less philanthropy. So, I’m a little worried about this sort of hero model rather than the civic engagement model.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So, I’m wondering, just in all the work that you’ve done, Deb, looking at firms and the role of firms in society, is there a model that makes the most sense where it comes to this? So, is it somewhere in between the Amazon model and maybe the Microsoft model?

DEBORA SPAR: Yeah. If I dare to be optimistic, I think the US is moving a little bit more towards a model of, perhaps out of fear, that companies, including Silicon Valley companies, that 20 years ago just wanted government to go away are now saying, “No, we actually need a working government.” Forget whether it’s Republican or democratic, we need a functioning government. We need government to take care of homeless people. We need government to educate children and we need government to build roads. And what we’re hearing in our other work dealing with alumni and other business leaders is increased sense of, yes, we need government to work, and what can we do as business people? Again, not to support a particular party or particular candidates, to just make sure that we have good people in government and that government, particularly at the local level, that we can start to build local coalitions to focus on these apolitical, social structures. Think of it as infrastructure, both social infrastructure and physical infrastructure. We need those things to work.

BRIAN KENNY: Right. The commons as we’ve talked-

DEBORA SPAR: Exactly.

BRIAN KENNY: About here quite a bit.

DEBORA SPAR: We need the commons to work.

PAUL HEALY: And I would add on top of that, that one of the nice things about having local governments start to work on these problems is that you allow much more innovation to take place. Rather than having one idea of being tried across the country, you can allow multiple ideas to look to work on these problems and see which ones actually start to make a difference.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Paul, the case does talk about the public reaction to this and frankly the cynicism. And we know that there are a lot of cynics out there, particularly questioning the motivation of a firm like Amazon and why would they do this? And to your point earlier, Deb, about isn’t the business of business to make money. So, what would you say to somebody who’s cynical about Amazon’s efforts here?

PAUL HEALY: So, I would say that you should keep encouraging Amazon to try to play a positive role in addressing this problem. That in fact, the problem’s not going to go away if we don’t all play our part and Amazon is going to have to play a part, but it’s not just Amazon. There is going to need to be support and work at the government level. Nonprofit organizations are going to have to be involved. And I think that especially for something like homelessness, we individuals who like our local environment and don’t want to change it are going to have to decide that we’re willing to give up our quarter-acre section with plenty of space around us and have a little bit more congestion in inner cities or closer to the cities to make sure that we have more availability of housing and that people can afford to buy housing at a regional or rent housing at a reasonable rate. Amazon’s not going to be able to solve the problem. So, I think you need all the constituents to decide that it’s an important problem and be willing to make some sacrifices to do it.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And I think Amazon’s sort of self-awareness now that they’ve engaged in this and they see just how difficult it is, throwing money at the situation probably is never going to be the right solution.

DEBORA SPAR: And my sense… And this is literally only from reading the newspapers, but my sense is as they’re now building their second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, that they have gone into it with more of a capacious sense of working with the local community, the school boards, to try and address the problem, bringing in all of these players rather than letting the problem evolve to a point where they sort of have to get pulled in a more of a savior role.

BRIAN KENNY:

PAUL HEALY: Yeah. And there’s an organization that was started a few years ago called We Are In, which is a conglomeration of Amazon, the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, many of the big players in Seattle. And they were willing to commit a lot of money to help homelessness, but it collapsed. So, I think there’s a sort of humility that comes from having tried this and realizing it is actually a very difficult problem and it’s going to need everyone to really be involved to make a difference.

BRIAN KENNY: I’ve got one question left and I’ll ask the same question of each of you, and maybe I can ask you to start, Deb. What lessons can business leaders learn from Amazon’s approach to this problem?

DEBORA SPAR: There’s a bunch of lessons here, but I think it is that in lessons, unless business… And particularly high profile businesses, unless they see part of their responsibility as being an engagement, a healthy engagement with their communities, it’s going to wind up biting them. And so, they need to think about their role in the community, which historically has been what business has done. They need to think about that civic role from the outset rather than waiting until the problems emerge.

BRIAN KENNY: Paul, what do you think? What can business leaders learn from the case?

PAUL HEALY: A couple of lessons. One is you can applaud Amazon if you’re a business leader for being aware of the problem. Because I think a lot of companies don’t even see the problem. And I think you can give Amazon some credit for trying to address it and recognizing that they do feel that they’ve got a civic responsibility here, which I think a lot of companies don’t think about enough. So, I think there’s a lesson there for companies to start thinking about if Amazon cares about this, should we be thinking about it? And then the third would be perhaps a sense of humility. Amazon hasn’t been able to solve this problem. It’s solved a lot of the problems, and it’s been able to do pretty remarkable things. It hasn’t solved this problem, and which just goes to demonstrate the problem’s intractability, and a level of humility for companies in these sorts of situations I think is worth noting.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Debora Spar, Paul Healy, thank you for joining me on Cold Call .

DEBORA SPAR: Thank you, Brian.

PAUL HEALY: Thank you.

BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call , you might like our other podcasts, After Hours , Climate Rising , Deep Purpose , IdeaCast , Managing the Future of Work , Skydeck , and Women at Work . Find them on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and if you could take a minute to rate and review us, we’d be grateful. If you have any suggestions or just want to say hello, we want to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] . Thanks again for joining us. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call , an official podcast of Harvard Business School and part of the HBR Podcast Network.

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The Urban Arboretum

The Urban Arboretum, maintained by Amazon Horticulture, provides a nature-focused, positive influence on Amazonians and others in the community. When planning for the landscape around The Spheres and neighboring blocks, our team saw a unique opportunity for creating an outdoor botanical landscape that reflects the uniqueness and diversity of the plants inside The Spheres.

As you walk through Amazon's Puget Sound headquarters, you will experience an urban botanical garden with plants from different geographic regions, suited to our Pacific Northwest climate. Most of the plants are not typical for downtown Seattle, let alone commercial landscapes. When we designed the arboretum, we wanted to create a unique experience for each block and give each building a distinct identity. For example, many of the plants outside The Spheres come from Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and South America. These plant species resemble those found inside The Spheres. We strive to make each section of our landscape visually harmonious and environmentally sustainable which includes selecting plants appropriate for the location, that attract and provide habitat for beneficial insects such as native pollinators.

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