With its beige stucco cladding, red clay-tile roof and arched windows and doors, a Christian Scientist church stands out among the houses lining the streets of a quiet Queen Anne neighborhood.

The “First Church of Christ, Scientist”  building has historic landmark status. That makes the 12 town-home units truly unique, carved, as they are, into the hollowed out center of the old domed building. The units share a huge central atrium, the “Sanctuary” with a stained-glass oculus in the roof, but each has its own address and outdoor entrance. The conversion was a huge engineering, architecture and art project.

The structural reinforcement was important of course, life-safety considerations. The ability to add vision-glass to the homes that have stained-glass windows. It was quite a feat,

the developer said.

The windows facing into the sanctuary are for the most part frosted to prevent a fish bowl effect. However, there are clear sky lights so you can see the original ceiling.

Nostalgic design features are thoughtfully integrated amongst modern, concrete and steel construction. The result is a century old monument transforming a place of worship into a residential opportunity without comparison.

Each home is an architectural masterpiece. The interiors boast soaring ceilings up to 30 feet high and generously-scaled floor plans of 1,600 to more than 3,000 square feet of living space. Many homes include rooftop terraces with city and territorial views. The generously-scaled floor plans are beautifully appointed with the finest fixtures and appliances including trusted brands that include Wolf, Bertazzoni, Liebherr, Asko, Kohler, Hansgrohe, LaCava and Durovit to name a few. Artisan touches include steel stairs with solid wood treads, stained concrete floors and exposed brick walls.

While all aspects of The Sanctuary are of museum-quality, the residences are as approachable as they are livable. An underground, controlled-access garage is connected to the Grand Atrium via an elevator. Homeowners may also enter their homes from their own private street address, like a New England row house. Inside, the careful reengineering of the century-old stained-glass windows systems slide to the side allowing ample light and fresh air while doubling as window treatments for privacy. Many homes feature private rooftop terraces bringing both nostalgic architectural detailing and city and territorial vistas into full view.

Two model homes showcase designs by Interior Designer Robin Chell, furniture retailer Evelyn Lee of Alchemy Collections and Betsy Fetherston of Fetherston Gallery, art curator for The Sanctuary. Home technology systems are integrated by WiPliance and interior and exterior landscaping is provided by Regan & Associates.

She pauses to scoop up an armful of scattered toys, then mounts another flight of stairs, crosses the living room, circles 38 steps on a cast-iron stairwell (“Look the other way,” she may call to someone below as she gathers her billowing dress around her calves), hauls herself up 13 rungs in a narrow vertical shaft, and emerges — at last! — into a glass globe 462 feet above this city.

But how did Ms. Franklin really get here? That is, how did this 46-year-old choreographer-turned-venture-capitalist-turned-no-nanny mom win a long-term lease on what may be the most extraordinary apartment in the city: the space at the top of the historic Smith Tower in Pioneer Square?

Well, she decided she wanted to live there, of course. And Ms. Franklin — who is either a “dynamo,” a “ball of fire” or a “highly determined woman,” depending on whom you ask — has a habit of getting what she wants.

What she wanted on a recent Saturday afternoon was for her 6-year-old daughter, Simone, to sit quietly inside the glass globe. The 10-foot-diameter lantern — with its 24 window panels — perches atop the 42-story tower like a crystal ball on a traffic cone. It is practically the definition of a place where children should not gambol. Naomi, 3, seemed content to ride the rubber horse that zips along a climbing rope, from the kitchen to the living room. But Simone, scampering up and down the primitive ladder, was seeking bigger thrills.

“Look!” she cried out, pointing at the cubbyholes that pock the concrete entrance shaft like a honeycomb. “Under this, thereâ€s wine! And thereâ€s a word, too. It says M-O-E-T.”

“Yes,” said Ms. Franklin, “Thatâ€s Moët & Chandon.”

These bottles are empties, the artifacts of 12 years†worth of parties, creative summits, fund-raisers and the occasional visit from the band U2. The next month alone, she said, would bring two school-parent dinners; the annual gathering of the Progress Alliance, a left-leaning donor group; a fund-raiser for Representative Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington; and a “marvelously goofy TheFilmSchool event,” with guests acting out film roles, directed by the actor Tom Skerritt. Almost all these affairs would be “one-pot specials,” Ms. Franklin said, that she prepares herself.

Ms. Franklin is a “delightful” entertainer, said Kurt Beattie, artistic director of ACT Theater in Seattle. (Oh, there was a theater benefit on the calendar, too.) “Sheâ€s very interested in stimulating conversations about culture, society, politics, technology,” he said. “Itâ€s a salon, really.”

But the main attraction of a night at the top of Smith Tower must be the Imax-strength views: Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the west, the Cascades to the east and, below, thousands of people doing the things they do when they believe no one is watching.

From the apartment she calls the “Lighthouse,” Ms. Franklin can see almost the entire city. But the city cannot see her. So the residence on top of the tower has taken on the status of an urban legend.

The tour guides around Pioneer Square can be heard to claim that “thereâ€s a shut-in whoâ€s lived up there for 80 years and has 200 cats,” said David Lahaie, 51, an energy and recycling executive. Mr. Lahaie is skeptical, to say the least: he lives in the apartment himself and is Ms. Franklinâ€s husband.

Stephen Willis, the Smith Towerâ€s docent and de facto historian, has encountered many odd theories in the 10 years he has guided visitors through the building. “I heard the other day that itâ€s still family owned by the Smiths,” the heirs of the Smith Corona typewriter fortune. “They havenâ€t had a stake in the building since the mid-1920s.”

The 1914 Beaux-Arts tower, with its white terra-cotta cladding, was an instant landmark — the tallest building on the West Coast at the time and, by many accounts, the fourth tallest in the world. But Mr. Willis said that no records endure to say who lived in the caretakerâ€s apartment atop the tower.

“It was one of those little hidden gems,” Mr. Willis said. “Everybody wanted it, but it was almost impossible to get.”

As late as the 1970s, the rent was just $300 or $400 a month, and possession would pass with the key from friend to friend, many of them “writers and artists,” he said.

As a former choreographer and performer, Petra Franklin had the right lineage. Indeed, her mother, Patt Franklin, was a painter and university professor. Her father, Lynn Franklin, was a photojournalist who wrote a book about salty characters in backwoods Maine. (Mr. Franklin, an amateur bush pilot, died in a plane crash in 1983 on his way to an interview.)

One of his black-and-white photographs hangs in the hallway outside the master bedroom. It shows a young Petra in the company of two friendly-looking octogenarians. One, it turns out, is the celebrated portrait photographer Lotte Jacobi. The other is Buckminster Fuller — or, as Ms. Franklin knew him, her erstwhile baby sitter.

“He was totally cool,” she said. “Here he is making me this hat.”

A memento from another childhood pal hangs from the rafters in the living room. The eight-foot-tall blue chandelier, which resembles Sonic the Hedgehog, is an installation by the glass artist and local tycoon Dale Chihuly. Ms. Franklin first met Mr. Chihuly when she was 6 and he was a visiting artist at the Haystack-Hinckley craft program, an offshoot of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, where her parents were instructors.

“He was setting up a hotshop — ” she said.

“My skirt! Look! Itâ€s blowing!” Simone interrupted. A warm gust of air puffed into Simoneâ€s purple-and-white dress, and exited through a hole in the fabric under the armpit.

“He would send me presents over the years,” Ms. Franklin continued. “One time he was in the city of Petra and he sent me this little present from there.”

“My momâ€s name is Petra!” Simone called out.

Ms. Franklin graduated from Bennington College, where she and her early â€80s friend Bret Easton Ellis took a class with the true-crime master Joe McGinniss, she said. And for a time she ran a dance school in Guatemala. Eventually, she landed at Mr. Chihulyâ€s workshop near Lake Union, in Seattle. For roughly 10 years, she acted as Mr. Chihulyâ€s helpmate, building up his organization while accompanying him to art openings and events.

It was an introduction to Seattleâ€s artists and patrons, its inventors and investors — and to Mr. Chihulyâ€s titanic marketing powers. These things would help Ms. Franklin when she started Vault Capital, a small investment fund, in 1998.

WHEN Ms. Franklin first visited the Smith Tower in 1997, the apartment had been empty for more than 10 years — and for good reason. “There was a huge water tower that was being taken out,” she said. “And there were big piles of concrete. There werenâ€t stairs, there were ladders to get from floor to floor. And youâ€d be living among amazing dust. When it rained, the rain all came in. It was like standing inside of a river.”

The building had landed in the real estate portfolio of the Samis Foundation, a Seattle nonprofit that supports Jewish education and culture. Part of the towerâ€s $28 million overhaul in 1998 involved removing the 10,000-gallon cast-iron tank that had once fed the fire-sprinkler system.

What the Smith Tower really needed, Ms. Franklin decided, was a newly expanded two-story dwelling. Two bedrooms and two baths could be squeezed onto the 37th floor, and an open living room/kitchen/dining room would fill the 38th. Naturally, this fantastic 1,750-square-foot apartment would need an occupant: herself.

“She said, ‘I could make this the greatest home and studio in the world,†” recalled William Justen, the managing director of real estate for the Samis Land Company.

“When we put a bid on the property, we didnâ€t allocate any income for that space,” he continued. “As far as the Samis trustees were concerned, if we could find a use for it and get some rent off it, that was a bonus.”

Mr. Justen was won over by Ms. Franklinâ€s sales pitch: he would later help found Vault Capital and also officiate at her wedding. The unit was rented for 10 years at a fixed market rate, he said, and Ms. Franklin received a discount for the improvements she made, amortized over 20 years.

Ms. Franklinâ€s investments during the tech boom had set her up nicely, she said. Yet her wealth, by Seattle standards, was unexceptional. Jim Castanes, the architect who mapped out the floor plan, said the budget on the project was “very, very low.” A new maple floor on the main level, he said, “was a big deal, budget-wise.”

“In terms of the finishes and all that,” Mr. Castanes said, “Petra basically mined the rest of the building.”

When companies moved into the newly renovated offices, Ms. Franklin said, they “pulled out some of the marble.”

“So I grabbed it.”

One 9-by-7-foot gray slab became a kitchen counter; another heap of marble now skirts the tub that provides a postcard view of Mount Rainier, some 50 miles away.

The black wood scrim work that decorates the doors came from the Chinese Room; Ms. Franklin found the panels stacked in the buildingâ€s basement. Nearby, she discovered a set of carved Chinese chairs that might be 300 years old. According to local lore, these furnishings were a gift from the last empress of China. (Mr. Willis doesnâ€t buy it.) However they came to Seattle, they belong in the apartment now.

Performing a kind of archaeological dig in the bowels of the building was easy enough. Rappelling down the outside to open the sealed windows was a more formidable challenge. Each of the four faces of the pyramid has six teardrop-shaped windows. Yet Ms. Franklin managed to get even this daunting job done for free.

As Ms. Franklin tells it, a former maintenance worker for the building, who had recently lost his ex-wife in a car crash, asked to affix a plaque with her name on top of the glass globe. As long as he was climbing out on a harness, Ms. Franklin asked, would he mind spending a day or two slicing open the windows?

“Mom!” called Simone, who was clambering up again to the glass globe, sherpa-ing up a bottle of San Pellegrino and three yellow sippy cups. Before long, this precocious entertainer might be ready to host her own parties in the Lighthouse.

“I would love to live here my whole life,” Ms. Franklin said. Yet the specific terms of the lease — what she pays and how long she can stay — are subject to some dispute.

“Ask Petra,” Mr. Justen said.

“I canâ€t really give you that information,” Ms. Franklin said.

In 2006, the Samis Foundation sold the building to Walton Street Capital for $43 million. In recent years, the building has either lost or shed its major tenants, including Walt Disney Internet Group, Microsoft and Providence Health and Services. A proposal to convert the tower to condominiums seems to have stalled. What plans the new owners may have for the penthouse is anyoneâ€s guess.

“I canâ€t say anything,” said Cleita Harvey, who represents the building for the leasing agent Urbis Partners — and then hung up the phone.

At the moment, Simone had a sub-tenant she wanted to evict from the globe. “Mom, thereâ€s a moth!” she said.

“It looks like heâ€s alive,” Ms. Franklin said.

“Could you take the moth and put it out the window?” Simone asked, nudging it with a pen. A moment later, the moth — apparently more dead than alive — was spiraling toward the littered street below.

Wherever you go from the pinnacle of the Lighthouse, itâ€s a long way down.

This unique 1,098 sq ft penthouse on sale is located on the top floor of the iconic loft residence designed by Mithum.

Concrete floors, steel beams & 19′ ceilings, generous master suite, luxury kitchen and on top of that, an amazing 270 degree view of the Iconic Space Needle and blocks from the Seattle Waterfront!