(click to enlarge photos)
There are few artifacts from Seattle history so well fitted with worthy stories as the Hotel Butler. This five-or six-story brick and stone block was built on the northwest corner of James Street and Second Avenue almost immediately following the Great Fire of 1889. The first of its worthy stories describes rotund developer Guy Phinney (of the Ridge) meeting with the slender young English architect John Parkinson in the cooling ashes at the James and
Second corner property, which Phinney had purchased earlier from pioneers Hiram and Catherine Butler. Phinney challenged Parkinson with a big order: a business block plan to be delivered in twenty-four hours. The architect managed to answer the call with a rendering for a structure that survives, at least in its first floor, 125 years later.
The widespread economic panic of 1893 transformed Phinney’s business block into a hotel with new owners, Dietrich Hamm and Ferdinand Schmitz. Through the tough times of the depression that followed, the new partners still hired “the highest priced chef in town,” and sometimes made special arrangements with paying guests of many sorts, such as the grandiose “Christ-like power” of Herrman the Healer. The Times on June 15, 1896, played along, surely for a fee, with Herrman’s promotions. “Nearly all chronic diseases quickly yield to animal magnetism in the hands of this wonderful magnetist.” The Butler’s “private parlors” 19 thru 26 were set aside for Herrman’s laying on of hands, but with the warning that “Those unable to pay must not come to the hotel, but to the theatre, where free tickets, free seats and free treatment on the stage will be given. Consultation, with full diagnosis of your disease, in all cases, is $1.00.”
Above and Below: Ross Cunnngham’s feature on the Butler published in The Times for July 15, 1977 (click to enlarge)
The Yukon gold rush of 1897 and after gave the Butler and every other hotel in Seattle its own rush. It was with this affluence that the Hotel Butler became “the place.” A short list of its famous guests included Buffalo Bill, Presidents Cleveland, McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt (not together), Gen. John Pershing, Lillian Russell, and the Great Northern Railroad’s James Hill. In an effort to lead good-time-yearning guests through the Jazz Age, the bands playing in the hotel’s popular Rose Room included Jackie Sounders, the smooth clarinetist Nicholas Oeconomacos, and during five of the prohibition years, Vic Meyers and his Brunswick Recording Orchestra, which parodied failed police raids with playings of “How Dry I Am.”
[The next clip – with 2 parts – is Don Duncan’s take on the Butler’s mostly happy life. Don wrote for the Times for decades. CLICK TO ENLARGE]
During the depths of the Great Depression, the Hotel Butler closed in 1933, the year prohibition was reversed. The following year the Phinney-Parkinson creation was reduced to two stories for parking above and shops at the sidewalk. Now with added stories it has parking for 427 vehicles so long (or short) as they are not over 6 feet 8 inches tall.
The Seattle Times has done well in cherishing the hotel’s stories, both when they were being ‘written,’ and also later as told by the hotel’s staff and guests. Four of The Times still appreciated columnists, John Reddin (Face of the City), Emmett Watson (This Our City), Byron Fish (By Fish, His Mark), and Don Duncan (Driftwood Diary), have dedicated a feature or more to the Hotel Butler. Most recently, in 1971, Duncan described it as “the most famous hostelry and nightspot in our city’s history . . . Under its roof were quartered prima donnas and Presidents, gold-rush promoters and railroad magnates, cigar-puffing politicians and the glittering stars of touring vaudeville shows.” For much of its life it was “the place” – Seattle’s ‘Grand Hotel.’
BELOW: A November 20, 1924 printing of a letter to The Times from Seattle’s then somewhat Thrumplike mayor, the showboat Dentist Edwin J. Brown, complaining about the behavior of the Seattle police during a raid made on the BUTLER HOTEL on August 10, 1924. [click to enlarge]
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, compadres? Ron Edge has put down a few links from the neighborhood, and as time permits I’ll pull a few more from old files. I remember buying some Butler Hotel ephemera long long ago. I’ll scan of it what I can find. I’m hoping that the hotel postcard will surface. It includes a message from a customer that is the opposite of what is expected – deriding rather than swooning over its celebrated cuisine.
MORE NEIGHBORHOOD LINKS FROM PAST PACIFICS
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
===== 
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
