Fairmont Olympic Hotel

After World War I, Seattle's Chamber of Commerce appointed a committee to work toward the goal of bringing a world-class hotel to the city. The committee identified an undeveloped portion of the city's Metropolitan Tract, a downtown area covering four blocks, as an ideal location for a new hotel. The Tract was also known as Denny's Knoll, after Arthur A. Denny, one of Seattle's founders, who had donated the land for the Territorial University, which would later become the University of Washington.[4]

The university had relocated to a campus north of Portage Bay in 1895, but still owned the downtown tract of land. The university's Board of Regents leased the land to the Metropolitan Building Company in 1904, with the agreement that it would be developed in trust for the university for the next 50 years.[4]

The Seattle Times held a contest to name the hotel. From 3,906 entries, the committee chose The Olympic.[4]

In 1922, once the lease had gone into effect, the Community Hotel Corporation chose New York architect George B. Post & Son to design the building; the local firm Bebb and Gould—a partnership between Charles Bebb and Carl Gould—were hired as the local supervising architects. Post created an Italian Renaissance design that was popular at the time, and this design remains one of the building's hallmarks today.[5]

Olympic Hotel, circa 1925

Builders broke ground on April 1, 1923, and construction began. The steel frame was started in January 1924, and by November, the building was completed. The total cost for construction was $5.5 million, with $800,000 going to furnishings alone.[4] The hotel was operated by Niagara Falls businessman Frank A. Dudley[4] and the United Hotels Company.[6]

The Olympic Hotel's grand opening took place on December 6, 1924, with a grand dinner and dance attended by more than 2,000 Seattle residents and their guests. Hundreds more people lined the streets just to catch a glimpse of the new hotel.[2]

In 1953, the University of Washington's Board of Regents extended the hotel's lease. At the same time, they approved a plan to demolish the Metropolitan Theatre, around which The Olympic Hotel had been built. The theatre had been a Seattle institution since it opened on October 2, 1911. The theatre's last night was December 4, 1954, hosting a performance of What Every Woman Knows starring Helen Hayes. The theatre was torn down, and a new entrance to the hotel was built in its place.[4][7]

On August 1, 1955, Western Hotels assumed management of The Olympic Hotel.[2] Western, renamed Western International in 1963, operated the Olympic until September 1, 1980, when the hotel was taken over by Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts,[8] Four Seasons undertook a $60 million renovation[9] and the hotel reopened to guests on May 23, 1982 as the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel, with a grand re-opening celebration held on July 10, 1982.[10]

In the mid-1990s, the University of Washington sold a 64 percent stake in the hotel to Chicago-based real-estate investment firm JMB Realty. In 2003, UW and JMB sold the Olympic to Legacy Hotels, which turned management of the property over to Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. The hotel was renamed The Fairmont Olympic Hotel[11] on July 31, 2003.[12] The hotel was later inducted into Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in 2018.[13]

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