Rector Hotel
- Architect
- John Graham & Company
- Year
- 1912
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Seattle, WA
- Collection
- beaux-arts downtown
The Rector Hotel rose at 3rd Avenue and Cherry Street in 1911, built by the estate of pioneer lumber baron Amos Brown and designed by John Graham, Sr. Only six of the planned twelve stories were ever built, leaving a shorter building than intended just north of Pioneer Square, in the shadow of the Smith Tower.
the building
A tower half-built. Graham's original design called for a twelve-story hotel raised in two construction phases, but the top six floors were never added, leaving the building at its current height.
From tourists to tenants. Built for the tourist trade, the hotel later operated as the St. Charles Hotel and, in the 1930s, the Governor Hotel; by the 1970s it had become a single-resident-occupancy hotel, and in 1986 Plymouth Housing Group renovated it into low-income housing.
the style
Graham designed the hotel in the Beaux-Arts style, just up the block from his own Chicago School–style Lyon Building of 1910 -- two distinct architectural languages from the same Seattle firm within a few blocks of each other.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
John Graham, Sr. led John Graham & Company, a prominent Seattle architecture firm; he also designed the neighboring 1910 Lyon Building near Pioneer Square.
significance
The Rector Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, following its 1986 conversion into low-income housing by Plymouth Housing Group.
nearby
- Arctic Building
- Lyon Building
- L. C. Smith Building (Smith Tower)
- Rainier Club
- Pioneer Building
- Interurban Building