On February 28th, 2001, Seattle suffered an intense earthquake that shook the spirits of many owners of historic buildings in South Downtown. Pioneer Square, the Chinatown International District, and the Duwamish area were all greatly affected, and contain a significant number of historic unreinforced masonry buildings. One of these, Pioneer Square's Cadillac Hotel, was slated for demolition in the months immediately following the earthquake. Thankfully, Historic Seattle and the property owner were able to come together and find an economically viable solution that would save the building, and give it a new life as the new home of the Gold Rush Museum.

Introducing the New and Improved Cadillac Hotel

Throughout the rest of 2003, Historic Seattle will be providing information, explanations, and anecdotes about how the Cadillac Hotel came from the edge of demolition to become our latest advocacy and development success story.

Right now (April 2003), Historic Seattle is shepherding plans for the Cadillac's rehabilitation through the City of Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods (specifically the Pioneer Square Preservation Board) and the Department of Design, Construction and Land Use. Proposed rehabilitations within Pioneer Square go through review by the Pioneer Square Preservation Board to insure that primary guidelines for the rehabilitation of historic buildings are followed. Nonprofit developers like Historic Seattle follow the same review process as private developers and business owners.

The project is moving toward receiving a Master Use Permit (MUP) for work on the site.

Timeline

While Historic Seattle would love to give the Cadillac's neighbors a specific start and end date for construction, the timeline is general to allow for unexpected delays. If the permitting process continues on schedule, groundbreaking at the Cadillac site should begin in late spring or early summer of this year. Work should be completed by summer of next year.

Between now and the project's completion, Preservation Seattle will feature articles on:

Interiors: What we found after the earthquake, what we're preserving, and what these interiors tell us about the history of the place.

Restoration of significant features: What's the difference between restoration and rehabilitation, and what applies at the Cadillac?

Adaptive reuse of space: What will the Klondike Gold Rush Museum's tenancy mean for the space, originally designed as a hotel? What is the role of adaptive reuse in historic preservation? What are the pros and cons?

Preserving Pioneer Square's areaways: Areaways are historic underground spaces built after the 1889 fire. What is now Pioneer Square is about a story higher than the original grade. How will work at the Cadillac Hotel affect the surrounding areaways?

Engineering issues: Many ideas about how to shore and stabilize the Cadillac were put forth within the course of the project's development. An upcoming article on engineering solutions will describe and illustrate earthquake damage and explain how structural problems will be overcome during the rehabilitation.

Creative financing: How are we paying for all this?

Partnership activity: Probably one of the most important but least publicized pieces of any successful project as complicated as the Cadillac Hotel is how various interests came together with a common vision. In the next few months, we'll be spotlighting our partners and explaining how, when and why each played a key role in the success of the project.

Sneak Peaks

When Historic Seattle first set foot inside the property, the wooden flooring bowed downward as a result of deferred maintenance before the earthquake hit. One of the interior stairs had been removed, which reduced the load capacity and weakened the building. The interior was exposed to the elements, after parts of the cornice gave way. Pigeons roosted in the upper floors before the building was secured last year, and the evidence of their presence further degraded the interiors.

In September of 2001, I took "before" photographs of Cadillac interiors. Preliminary shoring work involved stripping many of the wallboards away. Mounds of wall, plaster, and wallpaper lay in the middle of floor as the owner's representatives took Historic Seattle staff through the building, which was a little chilly. The walkthrough took place a few days after September 11, so the impact of this event was still lingering in most our minds as we reviewed the state of damage to the Cadillac.

The piles of wall debris contained bits of wallpaper attached to plaster embedded with horse hair. Using horse hair in plaster was common practice when the Cadillac was first constructed (1889) because it added binding strength to chalky plastering materials. The wallpaper samples bound to these hairy white lumps reflected popular interior trends from the late 19th and early 20th century. The neglect of the building over time created a terrific time capsule.

Russ Meltzer, Historic Seattle's resident property manager, found a number of artifacts on site as he helped tidy the site. Among these were old pharmaceutical and alcohol bottles, and a stack of newspapers from the 1940s. Some of these papers reflected the hotel's Japanese management. Many hotels like the Cadillac were owned by white business people, but managed by Japanese living nearby. When legislators passed the Alien Land Law in 1921, many Asian residents could not own, lease, or rent land.

Future excavations at the site, related to the building's rehabilitation, will no doubt provide more evidence of the building's past.

View last month's Techniques & Technology article

Back to Top