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Two Halves, One Hotel

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COURTESY OF LAWTON GOWEY THEN: Photographed when the building was new, the Hotel Pennington Apartments facing Marion Street below Fourth Avenue promoted itself as "a home away from home." PAUL DORPAT NOW: Little, if anything, has changed on the south side of Marion Street between Third and Fourth avenues in the 80 years or so between this "now and then."

SET ASIDE FOR the moment the looming skyscrapers and note how little has changed between this "then" and "now." For ambitious Seattle, this is rare, especially outside the city's designated historic districts, like Pioneer Square.

The centerpiece here is the Pacific Hotel, facing Marion Street between the alley and east to Fourth Avenue. The work of architect W.R.B. Willcox, it was completed in 1916 — or may have been. Both the county tax records and UW architect Norman Johnston's chapter on Willcox in the UW Press' revealing book "Shaping Seattle Architecture" give the 1916 date.

However, in the 1918 Polk City Directory an advertisement for the "Hotel Pennington Apartments," as it was then called, includes an etching of the same front façade seen here but with the terra cotta tile work of the right half continued to the corner of Fourth Avenue as one consistent presentation. Was the less ornate half of mostly burlap bricks at the corner a late compromise for time and/or economy? Or was the elegant etching too appealing to either correct or leave out of the ad?

The other surviving landmarks here include, far right, a corner of the Central Building (1907) and far left, the graceful Rainier Club (1904) across Fourth. Above the club is the current celebrity among landmarks, at least the dome of it: the First Methodist Church at Fifth and Marion (1907), which now seems saved for its second century.

When the nonprofit Plymouth Group purchased the Pacific Hotel — its name since the 1930s — for low-income housing, it took care to preserve the building's heritage, and in 1996 was given the state's annual Award for Outstanding Achievement in Historic Rehabilitation.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.