| Historic Name: |
New England Hotel |
Common Name: |
New England Hotel |
| Style: |
Queen Anne - Richardsonian Romanesque |
Neighborhood: |
Pioneer Square |
| Built By: |
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Year Built: |
1889 |
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| Significance |
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In the opinion of the survey, this property is located in a potential historic districe (National and/or local). |
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This building was built on the site of the first New England Hotel Building, built by L.C. Harmon in 1873. The present New England Hotel was designed by Elmer Fisher in 1889-1890 for Mrs. Margaret Harmon to replace the previous New England Hotel, which had burned down as a result of the Fire of June 6, 1889. The building and Mrs. Harmon are mentioned in the July 31, 1889 issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Mrs. Margaret Harmon has decided to erect a hotel on the old site of the New England Hotel on the northwest corner of Commercial and Main Street instead of a business block as was her original intention. A Chicago Hotel man has secured a lease of the hotel for the number of years at $ 1, 200 a month and will furnish it in splendid style.” From 1895 to 1904, the Frye and Bruhn Meat Packing Company had offices in the building. The actual meat packing headquarters were located well to the south of this building on 15 acres of tideflats at the present site of Seahawks Stadium. The site of this building is also where in 1852 Dr. David Maynard, known more commonly as Doc Maynard, built the second cabin when the area was first being settled.
Despite changes, the building retains essential elements of its original design and is architecturally significant in the context of the Pioneer Square-Skid Road National Historic District. It is also another significant work of the very prolific Elmer Fisher. This building shows Elmer Fisher’s tendency to divide the facades of his buildings into a grid, the influence of Victorian architecture. It also reflects the influence of the American version of the Romanesque Revival popularized through the work of H. H. Richardson and others.
Elmer Fisher’s life and career remain, in great part, something of a mystery, since the recent discovery that it is unlikely that he was really from Scotland, as he claimed and nothing else he described, outside of his work in British Columbia can be corroborated; however, after the Fire of 1889, he was the most prolific architect in Seattle. He is credited with almost half of the major buildings in downtown Seattle between 1889 and 1891. After 1892, after designing the Abbott Hotel, he ran that hotel, but appears to have stopped designing buildings. As of now, there appear to be no records concerning subsequent career moves, although he may have moved to Los Angeles.
Ibsen Nelsen, the well-known Seattle architect, instrumental in saving Pioneer Square, restored and rehabilitated the building, which was in very poor shape, in 1977-78. The building was certified in 1977.
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| Appearance |
| Virtually rectangular in plan, except that it has an angled façade between First Avenue South and Main Street, the New England Hotel is three stories in height and clad in brick. It has lost its original cornice. While the Main Street elevation at the ground level alternates between rectangular storefront openings and distinctive arched ones with ornamental semi-circular forms with added pointed shapes in brick, all the other openings at the second and third levels are trabeated. At the second and third levels, bay divisions are emphasized by brick piers or a thickening in the wall. Some of these piers go down to the ground level, others not. The Main Street façade has two floors of nine bays, each with distinctive windows divided into two by a central mullion. Each half is divided in the vertical direction into three squares. Similar windows appear on the four northern bays of the First Avenue elevation. The nine bays of the Main Street elevation and the four bays of the First Avenue elevation flank single wider bays, with windows divided into three, which appear to be symmetrically angled in relation to the angled bay. The central angled bay has only one vertical row of window, which surmounts a doorway, between Main Street and First Avenue.
The building, which was severely damaged, was restored in 1977. Based on historical photographs, the current fenestration carefully replicates the essential features of the original windows, with only a few minor differences (This was approved by the Pioneer Square Historic Review Board in 1977). Other essential architectural elements, including those that give texture to the building, such as the inset squares in the spandrels between the second and third level windows and the inset rectangles at the top of the piers, are intact.
Changes to the Building Above the Top Level Windows and at the Cornice Level
There have been some interesting changes in general appearance, however, as a result of the loss of the cornice and of the wall area just above the top level windows. In fact, the building, designed by Elmer Fisher, originally resembled the Korn Building, at Occidental S. and Yesler Way, more than it does today. The nine bays of the Main Street elevation and the four bays of the First Avenue South elevation were originally topped by arches, which were inset with what appears to be a screen of ornamental brick. The arches, in turn, were surmounted by semi-circular ornamental bands with added pointed shapes, much like the ones on the first level of the Main Street elevation. Rectangular shaped “screens” of brick also surmounted the larger bays flanking the central angled bay. The elevations were further augmented by the brick and terra cotta cornice, also divided into bays (or continuing the sense of the bays below) and decorated with many inset square shapes. This parapet rose even higher above the angled façade, in a manner similar to drawings of Fisher’s Korn Building.
This portion of the cornice had already disappeared by the 1930s, before the earthquake of 1949, according to King County Tax Assessor’s photos. |
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| Status: |
Yes - Inventory |
| Classication: |
Building |
District Status: |
NR, LR |
| Cladding(s): |
Brick |
Foundation(s): |
Concrete - Poured |
| Roof Type(s): |
Flat with Parapet |
Roof Material(s): |
Asphalt/Composition |
| Building Type: |
Domestic - Hotel |
Plan: |
Rectangular |
| Structural System: |
Masonry - Unreinforced |
No. of Stories: |
three |
| Unit Theme(s): |
Architecture/Landscape Architecture, Commerce |
| Integrity |
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Changes to Original Cladding: |
Slight |
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Storefront: |
Moderate |
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Changes to Plan: |
Intact |
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Changes to Windows: |
Slight |
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| Major Bibliographic References |
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Luxton, Donald, editor,, Building the West: the Early Architects of British Columbia. Vancouver B.C.: Talonbooks, 2003, 244-5.
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Ochsner, Jeffrey and Dennis Andersen. Distant Corner: Seattle Architects and The Legacy of H. H. Richardson. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2004.
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Raffin, Melina and Shelley Krueger. “ 201-221 1st Avenue South.” Report for URBDP 586 A. University of Washington, 2003. City of Seattle, Department of Neighborhoods, Historic Preservation Program Files.
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 31 July, 1889 issue.
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"New England Hotel, Part 1, Application for Evaluation of Significance," 1978.
“New England Hotel, Part 1, Application for Evaluation of Significance,” 1978.
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