The Hotel With the World’s Best View Is Moving Downtown
Built in sixty days and famed for its porch view, Seattle’s Rainier Hotel is giving way to the Grand Hotel as hard times and winter winds catch up with it.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Rainier Hotel will soon be a thing of the past. To a Post-Intelligencer reporter last night D. L. Harbaugh, the proprietor, said that the furniture and other belongings would be moved to the Grand Hotel just as soon as the proposed improvements were finished. New tiling will be put in the office and corridor, and the dining room will be made about three times as large as at present. Mr. Noyes, the owner, will spare neither pains nor expense to make the hotel second to none in the Northwest.
When asked why the change was to be made, Mr. Harbaugh said the distance to the Rainier was too great from the business portion of the city in winter, and the hotel, having been put up in sixty days, was disagreeable in wind storms. "It seems too bad to leave the house," he said, "as it has a world-wide reputation of having as fine a view from the porch as any hotel on earth. One reason why I am leaving is that extensive repairs are needed, and the times are too quiet to warrant the proprietors of the property in making them."
“It seems too bad to leave the house, as it has a world-wide reputation of having as fine a view from the porch as any hotel on earth.”
The Rainier Hotel is long gone, but its complaint is recognizable: a beloved landmark too remote from the business core, too expensive to maintain, and undone by a quiet economy. Seattle still argues over what to preserve when a building’s view is its main asset and repair bills come due.
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