Grand Pacific Hotel (Seattle) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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Grand Pacific Hotel
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The Grand Pacific Hotel, September 2007
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 Location in Seattle WA Downtown
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| Location | 1115-1117 1st Ave. & 1118 Post Ave, Seattle, Washington |
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| Built | 1890 |
| Architectural style | Richardsonian Romanesque |
| NRHP reference No. | 82004236 |
| Added to NRHP | May 13, 1982 |
The Grand Pacific Hotel (first known as the Starr Building and sometimes the California Block) is a historic building in Seattle, Washington located at 1115-1117 1st Avenue between Spring and Seneca Streets in the city's central business district. The building was constructed in 1890 [Often incorrectly cited as 1898] during the building boom that followed the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. Though designed as an office building, the Grand Central had served as a Single room occupancy hotel nearly since its construction, with the Ye Kenilworth Inn on the upper floors during the 1890s. The hotel was refurnished and reopened in 1900 as the Grand Pacific Hotel, most likely named after the hotel of the same name in Chicago that had just recently been rebuilt. It played a role during the Yukon Gold Rush as one of many hotels that served traveling miners and also housed the offices for the Seattle Woolen Mill, an important outfitter for the Klondike.
The Grand Pacific Hotel is a substantial four-story brick and stone building designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style and remains a rare surviving example of its kind outside of the Pioneer Square district. The building's original architect is not known. Though Elmer Fisher designed several other buildings for the Starr Estate, this one is not listed among his commissions in contemporaneous or current works. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 around the same time as the adjacent Colonial Hotel. The two hotels were interconnected during restoration in the early 1980s and today are collectively known as the Colonial Grand Pacific.
History
The Grand Pacific Hotel was one of hundreds of substantial brick buildings constructed in the aftermath of the Great Seattle Fire. It was constructed as the Starr Building for the estate of the late Lewis M. Starr by his widow Eliza J. Starr, the executor of the estate. Captain Lewis M. Starr was a prominent west coast mariner and businessman, who by the late 1870s was the regional contractor for the USPS and controlled the principal steamboat business in Puget Sound started by his brother George E. Starr, whose name was memorialized on the line's flagship steamer. Starr would sell the steamship business to the newly formed Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company in 1880, the payout from which he would use to purchase his numerous Seattle real estate holdings and build a mansion in Oakland, California. He spent the next decade traveling up and down the coast from his home, buying and developing investment properties and businesses in Seattle as well as Portland, Oregon, where he had helped establish a bank and construct one of the city's largest buildings to date in 1882. Starr had constructed several large buildings in downtown Seattle with more proposed before passing away in October 1887 after an extended illness. Many of his Seattle properties would be rebuilt after the great fire with buildings bearing his name.
The Starr Building was built at a cost of $75,000 (About $2,200,000 in 2019 dollars) by contractor James McKendrick and as reported in the summer of 1890, $12,000 in stone, $3,000 in iron 1.2 million bricks and 3,000 ft of lumber had gone into its construction. Due to the dramatic slope of the property towards Elliott Bay, the four story building had two additional floors below 1st Avenue, which housed various industrial enterprises. For most of the decade it stood out as the only fully-built building on the block. The Galt Brothers, a tile and fireplace accessory dealer, were the building's primary tenant in 1891 and The Seattle Woolen Mills would locate their offices in the lower floors during the Yukon Gold Rush. Though designed for office space, as early as 1891, the building's upper floors were occupied by the Ye Kenilworth Inn, operated by Minnie Hayward. The Kenilworth was closed and its furnishings liquidated in November 1892 but was back open within a month under the proprietorship L.N. Kinnaman. In 1897 the hotel was purchased by Denver realtor Henry Harding for his sister-in-law to run. Harding turned out to be a prolific conman wanted in several states for theft and fraud and when it was discovered that the checks he had cashed with the Dexter Horton Bank were fraudulent, the hotel was surrendered to the bank to pay off the debt. By this time Harding had disappeared, claiming to have a business meeting in Vancouver without returning on a promised date. He was eventually captured in Regina, Saskatchewan. After a succession of shady owners, the hotel was re branded around 1899 as the Grand Pacific Hotel, named after the recently remodeled hostelry in Chicago, which it is best known as today.
In 1913 the Starr estate sold the building to real estate investor A. Rodgers for $125,000. In 1931 the building was nearly gutted by an early morning fire originating from one of the basement floors, then occupied by a wholesale fish company, that vented through the hotel's central court, where flames were said to shoot 75 feet into the air. All 67 guests were either able to escape or were rescued by firefighters.
The hotel continued to serve long-term guests up until October 1966, when Seattle slum clearing policies forced the now run-down hotel into Nuisance abatement. Citing prohibitive repair costs, the building's then owner, Kerry Timber Co., evicted all the residents and closed off the building's top floors indefinitely. Beginning in the late 70s, The Grand Pacific and other historic buildings in the area were restored and redeveloped by Cornerstone Development Co, a subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser as part of the Waterfront Center project, which combined new construction with older buildings restored for housing. During restoration, The Grand Central Hotel was interconnected with the Colonial Hotel to the north. The Grand Pacific Hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 13, 1982.
