Grand Pacific Hotel
The Grand Pacific Hotel is a multistory brick building in the Richardsonian Romanesque style typical of commercial buildings constructed in Seattle in the period following the Great Fire of 1889. The hotel has close ties to the Klondike gold rush, as does the nearby Arctic Building.
Between 1896 and 1899, approximately 30,000 people arrived in Dawson City, Yukon (also the summer fishing grounds of the Han First Nation), seeking gold. These “stampeders,” as participants in the Klondike Gold Rush were called, represented more than 40 nationalities from all over the world, and as many as 80 percent of them would ultimately pass through Seattle on their way to the gold fields. Erastus Brainerd, a former newspaperman turned publicist, led Seattle’s campaign to dominate the business of thousands of would-be miners by widely circulating the idea that Seattle was America’s natural gateway to the Northern Pacific.[1]
In order to accommodate the unprecedented flow of people through Seattle, moderately priced hotels and rooming houses such as the Grand Pacific Hotel sprang up all over the city. The hotel, then, was both a product and beneficiary of the Klondike gold rush. It first opened its doors in 1898 as the First Avenue Hotel and catered predominantly to single male transient miners, sailors, and businessmen who wanted cheap accommodation with easy access to the port.[2]
The Grand Pacific Hotel was also part of the construction boom that followed the Great Fire of 1889, along with the Pioneer Building and the Chin Gee Hee Building. As the city was rebuilt, the commercial center moved northward and brick commercial buildings such as the Grand Pacific Hotel gradually replaced private residences in what is now the heart of downtown Seattle.[3]
[1] Pierre Berton, The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958; Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2010), 125, 417; Charlene Porslid, Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike(Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), 18; “The Heirs of the Klondike,” The Economist432, no. 8004 (Feb 15, 1997), 26.
[2] “Grand Pacific Hotel National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form,” in Washington Information System for Architectural and Archaeological Records Data (WISAARD), 3, January 1982, accessed August 16, 2016
[3] “Grand Pacific Hotel,” 3; David Williams, Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 55.
Credits and Sources:
Description by Madison Heslop on behalf of the American Society for Environmental History.
Berton, Pierre. The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush.New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958; Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2010.
“Grand Pacific Hotel National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form.” In Washington Information System for Architectural and Archaeological Records Data (WISAARD). January 1982. Accessed August 16, 2016.
“The Heirs of the Klondike.” The Economist432, no. 8004 (Feb 15, 1997): [PAGE#S].
Porslid, Charlene. Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men, and Community in the Klondike.Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998.
