Robin Shannon - Seattles Historic Hotels

IMAGES
of America

SEATTLES
HISTORIC HOTELS

HOTEL SEATTLE. This postcard of Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle showing the Hotel Seattle and Indian Totem Pole was mailed in 1905. The Seattle Hotel was built in 1890 from the ashes of the Great Seattle Fire. The handwriting on the card reads, This is a fine country when it dont rain. It rains always. Regards, Junger. (Authors collection.)

ON THE COVER: THE DENNYHOTEL WASHINGTON (18901906). Seattle once had the leading hotel of the Northwest. The Denny Hotel was built perched atop Denny Hill. The Denny Hotel was never opened and sat vacant for over a decade. James M. Moore bought and renamed it the Hotel Washington, and it was officially opened in 1903. (Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives 63801.)

IMAGES
of America

SEATTLES
HISTORIC HOTELS

Robin Shannon

Copyright 2010 by Robin Shannon
ISBN 978-0-7385-8002-9
Ebook ISBN 9781439642511

Published by Arcadia Publishing
Charleston SC, Chicago IL, Portsmouth NH, San Francisco CA

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009932664

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To DadI will miss your guidance forever.

CONTENTS

Seattle historians come in many variations, and I would like to thank the many places and people that have contributed to this wonderful project. A great gratitude goes to the Mayflower Park Hotel Historical Society; Audrey McCombs, Craig Packer, and Trish Festin are actively saving Mayflower history. Special thanks to Heather Mitchell, public relations coordinator from the Fairmont Olympic Hotel for making history come alive. Grazie (thanks in Italian) to Andrew M. DeDonker, sales account manager, at the Sorrento Hotel and the Hunt Club for literally taking photographs off the walls for me to scan.

Heartfelt thanks go to the many club members of the Pacific Northwest Postcard club, particularly Mark Sundquist; the Seattle Municipal Archives, particularly Jeff Wares; and the Museum of History and Industry, particularly Carolyn Marr. Thanks to the Seattle Public Library and the University of Washington Special Collections (UWSC); to my editor Sarah J. Higginbotham for giving me words of encouragement; to Jeremy, my son, who put up with endless hours of What are you doing, mom? (My reply: Working on my book!) Last but not least, Laurie ValBush, my travel companion and personal editor. These people and organizations have contributed to this book that you may enjoy opening time and time again.

Seattles first hotel, the Felker House, was built by Capt. Leonard M. Felker on land known as Maynards Point, which was the southwest corner of South Jackson Street and First Avenue South. Felker had purchased the land from David S. Doc Maynard (18081873) and brought the prefabricated building around Cape Horn on the brig Franklin Adams. The two-story framed structure featuring a huge veranda along the entire front was managed as a hotel, restaurant, and bordello by Mary Conklin, a tart-tongued Irishwoman who earned the nickname Mother (later Madame) Damnable. She was a good cook with a rough tongue and nasty temper. Years after her death, during a reburial in 1884, Madam Damnables body was found to have turned to stone and weighed 1,300 pounds. The Felker House burned to the ground in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, along with 64 city blocks.

The Occidental Hotel, built in 1865, proclaimed itself to be the largest hotel north of San Francisco. John Collins ran away from Ireland when he was 10 years old. In 1857, he arrived in Port Gamble and ran the lathe mill at Port Gamble. He also managed the companys Teekalet Hotel. Collins purchased one-third interest in the Occidental Hotel in September 1865. It was built on the triangle of land formed by Yesler Way, James Street, and Second Avenue.

A few of Seattles most sensational events involved the Occidental Hotel. First, U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes visited Seattle in 1880 and celebrated with a banquet at the Occidental. In 1881, two alleged holdup men were lynched from a nearby maple tree. Adelaide Nichols, Bertrand Collinss oldest cousin, remembered running out onto the Occidentals upper balcony to watch what Seattle apparently regarded as the most spectacular show ever held in town. Another appalling event occurred during the Chinese Riot. John Collins had what was termed cheap coolie Chinese laborers working for him. Immediately after the famous Chinese Riot, angry men stormed into the Occidental and demanded that the hotels Chinese employees be handed over to them. The owner, Collins, normally a mild-mannered man, became enraged and told the rioters that he would shoot anyone who laid a finger on his workers. Collins escorted his Chinese employees from the hotel to his own house across the street. There, he kept them safe in the basement of his house, with his uncle Will Jackling keeping guard with a shotgun. No rioter came to test his aim.

Eventually Collins acquired the other two-thirds of the hotel. In 1884, he razed the first wooden Occidental Hotel and built the second one in its place. The second Occidental Hotel was destroyed in the Great Seattle Fire on June 6, 1889. British writer Rudyard Kipling (18651923), after visiting Seattle soon after the fire, wrote, In the heart of the business quarters there was a horrible black smudge, as though a Hand had come down and rubbed the place smooth. I know now what being wiped out means. The smudge seemed to be about a mile long, and its blackness was relieved by tents in which men were doing business with the wreck of the stock they had saved. In the Occidentals place, the famous Seattle Hotel was built.

In 1876, the Arlington Hotel was built at First Avenue South and Main Street near the Felker Hotel, owned by the well-known O. N. Morse. Pres. Benjamin Harrison stayed here in May 1891. Across the street stood the New England Hotel, a Seattle landmark, owned and operated by Mrs. M. Harmon. On November 24, 1879, the Squires Opera House, Seattles first theater, opened on the east side of Commercial Street (First Avenue South), between Washington and Main Streets. The Opera House was not, however, very profitable, and in September 1882, owner Gov. Watson C. Squire reopened the building as the New Brunswick Hotel. The Brunswick was lighted by gas and advertised a bath on every floor.

In his History of Seattle, Clarence Bagley writes, Seattle was the only town in the county in January 1879. There were here then 18 stores of all descriptions; the population of the town had doubled within the last 18 months. He notes that by May 1879, the city featured four hotels: E. C. Evershams American House on Yesler Way, Louiss Oriental Hotel on Second Avenue North, John Collins and Companys Occidental Hotel, and L. C. Harmons New England Hotel at the corner of First Avenue South and Main Street.

In 1889, at the time of the Great Seattle Fire, the Denny Hotel was being built on Denny Hill by a group of developers, including Seattle founding father Arthur Denny (18221899). Famed New York architect Stanford White had designed the Washington to be six stories high with 100 rooms and 6 acres of terraced lawns. The developers bickering kept this magnificent hotel closed. On May 5, 1893, the New York Stock Exchange crashed, and the Panic of 1893 halted the events with interiors unfinished, and the Victorian showpiece stood vacant over Seattle for a decade until purchased by James Moore.