Welcome to the primary set up of a brand new month-to-month column by Meg van Huygen. Every month, she’ll inform the story of a specific constructing, bridge, or different historic place within the Pacific Northwest—and the individuals who created them.
In 2019, when upscale American bistro Ben Paris moved into the freshly renovated State Resort, its identify referenced a slice of now-obscure Seattle historical past. Between the 1910s and Seventies, sportsman and entrepreneur Ben Paris owned a series of eating places that flecked downtown—one in every of which occupied the identical handle at 1501 Second Avenue. However regardless of its lavish inside and elevated consolation meals, the brand new Ben Paris isn’t probably the most subtle factor ever to take up residence right here.
Since its completion in 1905, the neoclassical Eitel Constructing has occupied the northwestern nook of Second Avenue and Pike Road. With its terra-cotta ornaments and beige brick cladding, it was one of many first high-rise workplace buildings constructed in downtown Seattle—and one of the vital fashionable buildings in Seattle upon its debut, boasting luxurious facilities, state-of-the-art concrete flooring, and the biggest passenger elevator within the Pacific Northwest.
Fred Eitel arrived in Seattle from Minnesota in 1901, forming the Eitel Land Firm along with his brother, David F. Eitel, the following yr. Quickly, the second section of the Denny Regrade undertaking opened up loads of land-grabbing alternatives within the downtown space, as extra swaths of Denny Hill have been hydraulic-hosed into Elliott Bay, and the brothers started shopping for up parcels in what’s now Belltown and the Pike Place Market neighborhood. Actually, the southernmost border of the second section of the regrade ended at Second Avenue and Pike Road—the very web site chosen for the Fred J. Eitel Constructing.
Development started in April 1904, and the thought was to create deluxe workplaces for the quickly growing northern a part of downtown Seattle—which was then considered a type of a second downtown, along with what we now name Pioneer Sq.. On the bottom flooring can be two retail areas, whereas 95 workplaces meant for medical professionals would take up the highest 5 flooring. To map it out, the Eitels looped in architect William Doty Van Siclen.
The Eitel’s exterior is mainly brick and terra-cotta. The tan bricks used for the cladding have been manufactured by Denny Clay Firm, made out of disintegrated earth that after composed Denny Hill in the exact same spot. It was a examine in each utility and opulence, seen as we speak within the constructing’s very fancy entry vestibule on Second Avenue, that includes an elaborate Renaissance Revival classical portico fabricated from terra-cotta cosplaying as granite. Pairs of Corinthian columns, every with its personal corresponding pilaster, assist a excessive ornamental archway with indented entablature on the edges, whereas a panel on the florated frieze introduced the constructing’s identify.
The within was simply as luxe for the period—an early rental brochure promised that every workplace “may have electrical mild, fuel, cold and warm water, janitor service and compressed air, all except for mild to be furnished with out further cost.” Though many extra high-rises have been to be erected within the space over the following few years—significantly after Pike Place Market appeared only a block away in 1907—the Eitel Constructing was the centerpiece of the city district that was nonetheless being carved into the panorama.
Upon the constructing’s debut, Max Ragley Drug Firm occupied the southeastern half of the bottom flooring, dealing with Pike Road, whereas a 10-cent retailer operated out of the northern area dealing with Second Avenue. A point out of “well-known druggist” Ragley was included in rental brochures, to attraction to medical doctors and different medical professionals, whose companies have been helped by an on-site pharmacist. (Ragley was later changed by Swift Medication after which, in 1925, George Bartell’s ninth drugstore in Seattle, which might function within the area till 1958.) Extra retail would transfer in underground as effectively—the Pike was a “trendy grill room with a mission just like the rathskeller,” and it took up the Eitel’s whole basement flooring in 1905.
Fred Eitel made his workplace on the second flooring within the constructing. However by 1906, the Eitels had already offered it, their dollar-sign eyes now forged upon Bellevue, since they knew the Lake Washington Ship Canal was coming. Fred fashioned the Bellevue Land Firm with F. A. Sutphen and William Norris and began the identical course of another time, shopping for up property alongside the shores of Meydenbauer Bay and later platting the Lochleven district—which certainly grew to become worthwhile when the canal was accomplished in 1916. Eitel went on to assist discovered the Bellevue Water Firm within the Nineteen Twenties, served on the Bellevue Faculty Board, and was one of many impresarios concerned within the creation of Meydenbauer Park.
The J. A. Livesley Firm added a seventh flooring to the Eitel Constructing the identical yr it was bought. The accession could be very seen from the road, with two distinct cornices—one unique, one extra—creating an ice cream sandwich impact on the prime of the construction. The constructing modified house owners a number of extra instances through the years, and the workplaces have been ultimately opened to nonmedical tenants: a watchmaker, a typewriter repairman, a number of psychic readers, a number of photographers, many alternative attorneys, a ballet academy, the Washington Republican Membership, and a “doll hospital,” amongst others. (, to repair dolls? Ostensibly?)
In 1914, Ben Paris opened up a card room and restaurant within the basement of the Eitel, within the Pike’s former unit. Paris was a Texan sportsman, conservationist, and entrepreneur who landed in Washington state in 1906 and set about opening a collection of upscale billiards parlors amongst Seattle, Mt. Vernon, and Bremerton. In 1930, Paris’s best-known institution would open a number of blocks away, at 1609 Westlake Avenue, purveying barber providers, males’s clothes, fishing deal with, searching rifles, and different sports activities gear alongside meals within the restaurant. Notably, it additionally included an enormous aquarium within the eating room, stuffed with dwell bass.
By the late ’50s, each Bartell Medication and Ben Paris left the Eitel, and the decline of the blocks surrounding Pike Place Market commenced across the similar time. Tenants fled their workplaces, as smutty film theaters and two-bit taverns arrange store on the identical block, attracting crime, and the constructing, which had few vacancies prior, hardly ever loved full occupancy thereafter. By 1968, simply the second flooring of workplaces and the retail areas at avenue degree and the basement have been rented out. Actual property traders Richard and Sandra Nimmer purchased the Eitel in 1975, hoping to restore and resell it, however no consumers manifested. By 1978, nothing above the primary flooring was occupied. Beneath its new possession, the Eitel Constructing fell into disrepair and was quickly identified regionally as an eyesore.
Between 1995 and 2015, the constructing was maybe greatest identified to downtowners and workplace staff as the house of the sketchy, nonetheless beloved Osaka Grill Teriyaki & Deli. Affectionately identified to longtime Seattleites as “Scaryaki” or “Scary Teri,” no prep gloves have been worn right here, there have been transferring cockroaches on the ceiling, and the proprietor would possibly promote you a stolen iPad alongside together with your spicy hen field, however the meals was nonetheless incredible.
The Eitel remained on the market all of the whereas. Delicate harm sustained within the 2001 Nisqually earthquake additional dissuaded potential consumers. By 2006, a wig store, a smoke store, a nail salon, Scary Teri, and the King County Division of Well being’s needle change as its solely tenants, the Eitel Constructing was a powerful candidate for demolition. That’s, till the decrepit constructing was designated as a historic landmark the identical yr by the Landmarks Preservation Board. This was a calculated response to proprietor Richard Nimmer looking for so as to add a 22-floor tower on prime of the present constructing—he couldn’t modify it if it have been a protected landmark. Even then, it took till 2011 for the Seattle Metropolis Council to approve the landmark designation, following a prolonged battle between Nimmer, who opposed the principles and suggestions that the Landmarks Preservation Board would impose on his property, and the rental house owners at Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue, on to the north of the Eitel, who would lose their southern views if Nimmer constructed his tower.
As soon as the dispute was settled and the landmark standing was secured, the property was put up on the market but once more. After many potential consumers backed out, Nimmer lastly offered the Eitel to Lake Union Companions in late 2015 for $5.35 million. The Seattle-based business actual property agency socked one other $25 million into renovating the entire constructing, including an entire seismic retrofit, refinishing the terra-cotta exterior, and constructing out a 91-room boutique lodge within the inside, executed by Vida Design. The historic constructing was rigorously preserved by architectural agency Weinstein A+U and normal contractor Exxel Pacific, together with the ornate arched entry on Second Avenue, and a brand new steel-and-glass cover was added. Buyer elevators have been engineered, in addition to recent new mechanical, electrical, and plumbing methods. The highest flooring, added in 1906, now homes penthouse suites with personal terraces, upon which company can benefit from the western view of the Market and Elliott Bay past it.
The undertaking completed in 2019, and the Eitel Constructing was grandly debuted to the general public as soon as once more, restyled because the State Resort. Whereas the lodge’s foyer and elevator financial institution take up the northern half of the bottom flooring, which was one retail area, the southern half is dwelling to the latest incarnation of Ben Paris. The restaurant sports activities heat teak flooring, white tile, and a large-scale customized mural by Seattle tattoo artist Kyler Martz. As a nod to the restaurant-slash-billiards-parlor that after lived one flooring under, the brand new Ben Paris serves equally unfussy American delicacies—if just a little jazzier than the kind you would possibly discover in a midcentury pool corridor—and plenty of cocktail names are references to Seattle historical past. E.g., the Filson Journeyman, the Increase and Bust, and the Gin Griffey Juniper.
In case you have a look at a photograph of the intersection of Second and Pike when the Eitel Constructing was younger, you’ll see that not one of the different buildings survive as we speak. Gone are the outdated Bon Marché constructing (razed in 1991 to make approach for the Newmark Tower, now occupied by Goal), the Romanesque Revival–styled Masonic Constructing (later the Folks’s Saving Financial institution, changed by a parking storage in 1963), and a no-named two-story retail constructing (changed by the Haight Constructing in 1911, which was demolished to make approach for a car parking zone for a few years, and changed by the 39-story residential West Edge Tower in 2017). It’s a minor miracle that the Eitel Constructing remains to be with us, at 120 years outdated, to say nothing of being in such prime form. Cease by the following time you’re within the neighborhood, to gaze up on the ice cream sandwich cornices, benefit from the restored ornate entryway, or simply have a stunning, berry-studded Gin Griffey Juniper within the bar at Ben Paris. It’s your constructing to take pleasure in, Seattle—hopefully for a few years to come back.