The Hotel Seattle, also known as the Seattle Hotel and the Collins Block, was situated in Pioneer Square, close to the Pioneer Building, in a triangle-shaped block bounded by James Street to the north, Yesler Way to the south and 2nd Avenue to the east. It supplanted two earlier hotels, the Occidental Hotel in masonry and then wood.
Parking lot for a sinking ship, 2007
The Great Seattle Fire’s ashes were used to construct it in 1890, and it was a hotel up until the early 20th century. The Seattle Hotel had transformed into an office block by the time the nearby Smith Tower was finished in 1914. The Sinking Ship, a multistory parking garage, presently occupies the space where it formerly stood after being dismantled in the early 1960s.
Description
The Seattle Hotel was a triangular-shaped structure with its thin face situated at the intersection of James and Yesler (much like the Flatiron Building in Manhattan, New York). It was five floors tall and, for much of its existence, had the date “1890” inscribed above the fifth-story window to denote when it was finished. It stood out sharply from its dark brick and stone neighbours since it was built in the Victorian architectural style and was covered in white cement.
Importance of its destruction
The Seattle Hotel, which had been harmed by the 1949 Olympia earthquake and had been abandoned by 1961, was demolished and replaced with a parking garage that was mockingly dubbed the “Sinking Ship” as part of an urban renewal plan that would eventually cause the district’s entire stock of historic structures to be demolished. That was the extent of the plan. The fall of the ancient hotel sparked a preservation campaign led by people like Alan Black, Victor Steinbrueck, and historian/author Bill Speidel that helped the Pioneer Square neighbourhood get back on its feet. A historic district area, including the Square, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 after having its structures renovated.