Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: Olympic Hotel Construction, 1924

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(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: An instance in the 1924 construction of the Olympia Hotel recorded from the roof of the Cobb Building. Included, upper-left, among the First Hill landmarks are, on the horizon at Madison St. and Terry Ave., the Sorrento Hotel, and, far left, the brilliant terra-cotta clad Fourth Christian Science Church, now Town Hall, at 8th and Seneca. (Courtesy Museum of History and Industry)
NOW: Jean Sherrard advises “I couldn’t move closer to the original prospect because the southeast portion of the roof is now the Cobb Building’s penthouse garden.”

Here is another offering from the Webster and Stevens collection, held in the library of the Museum of History and Industry.  Early in the twentieth century Webster and Stevens moved their studio into the Seattle Times Building and handled the newspaper’s editorial photography. Consequently, I had some hope that I’d be able to date this contribution by finding it printed in The Times. (As I have noted before, The Times can be searched online through the Seattle Public Library.)  Nevertheless, while enjoying the pleasures of looking, I failed to find this photograph.  Perhaps Webster and Sevens recorded it for the Community Hotel Corporation, which successfully hustled the Olympic’s 1924 construction with bonds

invested by more than 3,000 citizens.  This local enthusiasm reminded some genuine old-timers of the ‘Seattle Spirit’ they had known in the late 1870s that supported Seattle’s struggles with what locals considered the neglect of the Northern Pacific Railroad and the competition with its company town, Tacoma.

The Olympic Hotel photographed by Lawton Gowey from the front lawn of the Federal Courthouse on 6th Avenue, March 13, 1963.

Once the bonds started selling, the Italian Renaissance landmark went up with remarkable speed on acres that had been the first home for the University of Washington.  The Times enjoyed its coverage on what it called “the hotel of Seattle’s dreams.”  The construction began in earnest on April 1, 1923, on the 450-guest-room “hotel of its dreams.” The Olympic Hotel was built around the city’s by then cherished theatre The Metropolitan, seen at the top in the featured photograph.

Clearing the old university grounds around the Metropolitan Theatre for the construction of the hotel.  First Hill is on the right horizon.  On right Sprint Street is momentarily blocked by a sizeable building moved off of the impending hotel’s footprint, the part of it at the northwest corner of Spring Street and Fifth Avenue.
The Olympic Hotel’s wing along 5th Avenue was completed in 1929. It shows here on the left with the hotel-surrounded Metropolitan Theatre on the right, and the new Northwest Insurance tower upper-right,   Now renamed the Seattle Tower, it was completed in 1928..

The theatre was constructed in 1911 and closed in 1954 for the Olympic’s enlargement between its two wings. With its hurried construction, the hotel took on the elegant “dress of terra cotta tiles” near the end of February 1924, and by December 6, 1924, a dinner dance celebrated the opening of the Olympic, the city’s ‘grand hotel.’

The Olympic Hotel’s lobby – when new.
The Olympic’s spiral staircase inside the hotel’s Fourth Avenue entrance.

I ordinarily travel with a sleeping bag and frankly know little of hotels.  For an informed opinion on the now Fairmont Olympic Hotel’s status among local hostelries, I asked Tamara Anne Wilson, a friend who is also widely experienced in the professional virtues of local hospitality.  From 1997 to 2003 Tamara kept several offices of her PR firm on the hotel’s twelfth floor. After naming and complimenting several other Seattle hotels, she concluded “there will never be anything like Seattle’s Olympic Hotel again. Valet, doormen and concierge that understand discretion, perfect classic martinis, comfortable seating areas that aren’t ‘trying too hard to be hip’.”

The Olympic Hotel’s Georgian Dining Room (when new).

Finally, in the interest of ‘full disclosure,’ Tamara continues and concludes that in January 1960 when her father Lieutenant William Critch was preparing to ship to Okinawa with his bride of three months, Marlene Prosser, they got the order to leave instead for a preferred station in Hawaii.  The couple celebrated with dinner at Rosellini Four-10 and a night at “the” hotel.  The appropriate months later Tamara was born in Honolulu.  “The Olympic was conceived for the carriage trade.  I’m grateful I was conceived there.”

The Olympic’s Venetian Room used here for classes in the preparation of meats.

WEB EXTRAS

The creation of this column was documented by KOMO-TV’s Eric Johnson in an installment of his long running series, Eric’s Heroes. Thanks, Eric!

Anything to add, compadres?  Yes heroic Jean for you and your admiring platoon of fellow recorders (aka shutterbugs) we will pull free from the archive a few more features from the neighborhood often on the key subjects (hotels and theaters.)

THEN: Steel beams clutter a freshly regraded Second Avenue during the 1907 construction of the Moore Theatre. The view looks north toward Virginia Street.

THEN: An early-20th-century scene during the Second Avenue Regrade looks east into its intersection with Virginia Avenue. A home is being moved from harm's way, but the hotel on the hill behind it would not survive the regrade's spoiling. Courtesy of Ron Edge.

THEN: The Metropolitan Tract's Hippodrome was nearly new when it hosted the A.F. of L. annual convention in 1913.

THEN: With the stone federal post office at its shoulder – to the left – and the mostly brick Cobb Building behind, the tiled Pantages Theatre at Third Ave. and University Street gave a glow to the block. (Courtesy Lawton Gowey)

THEN: Thanks to Pacific reader John Thomas for sharing this photograph recorded by his father in 1927. It looks north across Times Square to the almost completed Orpheum Theatre. Fifth Avenue is on the left, and Westlake on the right.

THEN: Plymouth Congregational Church barely reached maturity – twenty-one years – when it was torn down in 1913 for construction of the equally grand but less prayerful Pantages Theatre, also at the northeast corner of Third Avenue and University Street. (Museum of History & Industry)

THEN: Lawton Gowey looks north through the tail of the 1957 Independence Day Parade on Fourth Avenue as it proceeds south through the intersection with Pike Street. (Courtesy, Lawton Gowey)

THEN: Seen here in 1887 through the intersection of Second Avenue and Yesler Way, the Occidental Hotel was then easily the most distinguished in Seattle. (Courtesy Museum of History and Industry)

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