Fairmont Olympic Hotel

University Street in downtown Seattle is named for a campus that is no longer there. The Territorial University of Washington opened on this hill in 1861 and left for its present site in 1895, but the university kept the land, and in 1924 the Olympic Hotel rose on it. The Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle still pays rent to the University of Washington as part of the Metropolitan Tract.

History

Seattle built the hotel itself. The Community Hotel Corporation sold bonds to local residents in 1922 and 1923 so that the city would have a hotel fit for the convention trade, and the Olympic opened with a civic gala on 6 December 1924. George B. Post and Sons of New York, who had designed the Statler hotels, drew the building with the Seattle firm Bebb and Gould. For decades it was the city's grand address, the place where visiting presidents stayed and where the Seattle establishment held its dinners, managed for much of that time by Western Hotels, the Seattle company that became Westin. The hotel entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

By then it needed money. Four Seasons took a lease, closed the building and spent two years on a complete restoration, reopening it in 1982 as the Four Seasons Olympic. Fairmont Hotels and Resorts took over management in 2003, and the house has been the Fairmont Olympic since. A further renovation finished in 2022 redid the lobby, the bar and the restaurant.

Architecture and design

The style is Italian Renaissance, worn on a steel frame. The lower storeys are faced in terracotta and brick with arched windows and a deep cornice; above, the guest floors rise in plain brick. The public rooms are the point. The lobby climbs through two storeys under coffered plaster, with oak panelling, chandeliers and a mezzanine gallery looking down on it. The Spanish Ballroom, with its painted beams and balconies, is the ceremonial room of the city, and the former Georgian Room, built as the hotel's dining room, keeps its tall windows onto University Street.

Rooms and suites

There are 450 rooms and suites across the upper floors, high-ceilinged by the standards of the city's newer hotels. Decoration is traditional and restrained, with pale walls, dark wood and marble bathrooms, and the corner suites look towards Elliott Bay or the city. Pets are allowed, which is unusual at this level.

Dining

The Georgian was the hotel's formal restaurant for decades and closed in 2020. The 2022 renovation replaced it with The George, a brasserie in the same room, and added the Olympic Bar off the lobby. Shuckers, the oyster bar on the corner of the building, has been serving Pacific Northwest oysters in a panelled room since the 1970s and is the one address locals use without thinking of the hotel.

Wellness

The indoor pool sits under a glass solarium, a rare thing in a building of this age, with a health club beside it. The spa offers treatments in a suite of rooms on the same level.

Weddings and events

The Spanish Ballroom is the principal room for weddings and galas, and the hotel's meeting floors handle the conferences the building was financed to attract in 1924. Smaller salons and the former Georgian Room take dinners and receptions. Weddings have been a Seattle tradition here for a century; the lobby staircase and mezzanine are the usual photograph.

Location

The hotel sits at 411 University Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, in the heart of downtown. Pike Place Market is five blocks north-west, the Seattle Art Museum two blocks away, and Pioneer Square ten minutes on foot to the south. The Symphony light rail station, called University Street until 2024, is on the next corner and runs to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in about 40 minutes. King Street Station, for Amtrak, is a mile south. Among luxury hotels in Seattle it is the one with a century behind it.