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The Seattle Art Museum at Volunteer Park opened in 1933, following a gift of $250,000 from Robert E. Fuller, the president of Seattle Fine Arts Society, and his mother, Margaret MacTavish Fuller. The museum is located on land donated by the city of Seattle in the Capital Hill neighborhood. The art moderne building was designed by Seattle architect Carl Gould, operating in partnership with Charles Bebb as Bebb & Gould. As the collection grew, a larger building was needed. Though improvements were made over the years, proposals to substantially expand the Volunteer Park facility were never realized and eventually the museum began to look towards building a larger facility in downtown Seattle.

In 1980, city plans to redevelop Westlake Mall that included a downtown site for the Seattle Art Museum were defeated in the State Supreme Court after it was ruled by the King County Superior Court that the city had no right to condemn property in the area for the project. After several legal delays, the Seattle Art Museum formulated preliminary plans to build a downtown branch of the museum without the city's Westlake project.

In December 1982, commercial retailer Penney's transferred a half city block with three buildings to the Seattle Art Museum. The site, located at Second Avenue between Pike and Pine Streets, was formerly occupied by the department store. The downtown property, valued at $9.4 million, was sold to the Seattle Art Museum for $1.45 milion in the donation-sale, though it was not determined in advance how the property would be used.

The property was eventually sold in favor of a site a few blocks to the south at 1300 First Avenue. In 1986, Seattle voters approved a levy that would enable the museum to build a large facility in downtown Seattle, which opened in 1991, and dedicate the existing Volunteer Park location to the Asian art collection, reopening in 1994 as the Seattle Asian Art Museum.