Tacoma's ‘aspirational building' turns 100. A history of the Winthrop Hotel

Yahoo

16-05-2025

Downtown Tacoma was once home to a grand hotel. Now 100 years old, the building has seen much change.
When it was conceived in the early 20th century, the people of Tacoma had high hopes for the Winthrop Hotel, the city's historic preservation officer Reuben McKnight told the The News Tribune recently. Its elegant decor, grand ballroom, suites and restaurants were made possible by a large group of citizen investors who wanted Tacoma to have a world-class hotel and campaigned across the region to fund the project, he said.
'It's had a long place in the hearts and minds of Tacomans — most people who grew up in Tacoma in the 1960s probably remember going to events there,' McKnight said.
Following its opening in the 1920s, it became a central gathering place for people across the city and state, hosting events for both local and larger professional clubs and associations, student dances, style shows, competitions and musical performances, among other affairs. It also served as a lodging and meeting space for notable guests during Washington state's 50 years of statehood Golden Jubilee celebrations and later, during World War II as the military presence at the local army base of Fort Lewis grew.
During its early years as a hotel, the Winthrop was infamously witness to some mysterious crimes, including the kidnapping and murder of a local 10-year old boy, the suspicious deaths of an unidentified guest couple in their hotel room and a dramatic attempted robbery that ended with police shooting and killing an escaped convict. It also achieved note as the set of a scene in the 1927 silent film, 'Eyes of the Totem,' by the Hollywood director Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke.
Following years of struggling business, the Winthrop Hotel was eventually closed in 1971 and converted into affordable housing units in 1973, according to HistoryLink. Since then, it has changed owners multiple times; despite some discussion of restoring it to a hotel in recent decades, today the Winthrop remains as an affordable-housing apartment building, though some of its original features and rooms remain intact.
The Winthrop Hotel had its grand opening at 773 Broadway on May 16, 1925. It was conceived in a local citizens' movement to build a civic center and tourist attraction for Tacoma, according to an article from HistoryLink, an online encyclopedia of Washington state history.
In 1922, a group of Tacoma residents led by local businessman Henry A. Rhodes organized to bring more than 2,300 investors onto the project, who then filed their plans as the Citizens Hotel Corporation, according to the article.
McKnight said the community engagement in the construction of the Winthrop Hotel made it an 'aspirational building' for the city's residents.
'It shows the vision and future-minded folks of that time in 1920s Tacoma, really trying to boost downtown and attract investment and visitors and turn Tacoma into a world-class city,' he said.
According to the HistoryLink article — authored by historian Duane Denfeld — the Citizens Hotel Corp. brought on the Daniel M. Linnard Co. of California to supervise construction and then manage the hotel, and the Linnard Company then selected architect William L. Stoddart, a New York hotel specialist, to design the project. Stoddart enlisted the assistance of Tacoma architect Roland L. Borhek to adjust his design for Tacoma, hoping to capture a space that was efficient, social and suitable for the city, appealing to the needs of working travelers and local residents alike, according to Denfeld's article.
The HistoryLink article states construction began in 1923, and the 12-story building was finished by early 1925, unveiling 250 rooms each with a private bathroom, telephones in every room, a roof garden and the Crystal Ballroom complete with Austrian crystal chandeliers and two dining rooms with space for 500 guests. The hotel also featured a parking lot, a beauty shop, restaurants and more than a dozen retail stores at its street levels. Only one other West Coast hotel had a roof garden, making the Winthrop's a rare place, according to the HistoryLink article.
Bill Baarsma, a historian and former Tacoma mayor, told The News Tribune on Thursday that he recalled visiting his grandparents during their stays at the hotel and eating in the hotel restaurants, adding he had many positive memories of the hotel's social scene.
'When I was a student at the University of Puget Sound, we had social events there, and I still remember a very romantic evening with a girlfriend; her sorority was having a dance there in the ballroom, and we ended up on the roof and overlooking the skyline,' Baarsma said. 'I still remember these things like they were yesterday.'
Michael Sullivan, a retired historian and former historic preservation officer for the city of Tacoma, said the hotel was named after Major Theodore Winthrop, a Civil War officer and author who had written about Tacoma. In his book 'The Canoe and the Saddle,' Sullivan said, Winthrop poked fun at the name of Mount Rainier, a sore spot for early 20th century Tacoma leaders following a latest unsuccessful campaign to change the name to Mount Tahoma, a version of local Native American tribes' name for the mountain.
The Tacoma Daily Ledger held a contest to name the hotel and selected Winthrop as the winner, leaving Tacomans satisfied with what they viewed as a sympathetic figure in their mountain dispute, he added.
In its first few decades, the hotel was site of some notorious local crimes. According to the HistoryLink article, in December 1927, two convicts — one escaped and one recently released — attempted to rob the hotel's night clerk, but Tacoma police had received a tip. The night ended with a shootout that killed one convict and seriously wounded the other, who went on to serve time in the state penitentiary.
In April 1936, a couple staying at the hotel killed themselves with chloroform and went to lengths to hide their identities — which remain unknown — and in December of the same year, the Winthrop bore witness to the still-unsolved kidnapping and murder of local 10-year-old boy Charles Mattson, according to HistoryLink.
During its years as a hotel, the Winthrop typically did not exceed 50% occupancy; it achieved only moderate success and did not recoup its original investment for the Citizens Hotel Corp., McKnight said.
Still, it served as a popular center for local events and visitors to congregate, hosting proms, dances and weddings in its ballroom, according to HistoryLink. Photos from the Tacoma Public Library's Northwest Online Records and Collections Access (ORCA), a digital photo archive, show the Winthrop hosting a 1927 banquet for the Washington State Associated Master Barbers of America and later, a 1939 Tacoma Bachelor Club ball and style show in the Crystal Ballroom.
In March 1926, the hotel was briefly transformed into a fictional Chinese cabaret called 'The Golden Dragon' for an appearance in the silent film 'Eyes of the Totem,' which had been long lost until its rediscovery in a New York City museum vault in 2014.
The film was directed by the notable filmmaker Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke — who went on to be nominated for Oscars twice and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — and produced by H.C. Weaver Productions, a motion picture studio that was established in Tacoma in 1924. Historians believe the Winthrop Hotel is likely featured in the other two films produced by Weaver Studios, although their full copies have been lost, Sullivan said.
Some events brought people together from across the area, state, or nation — one ORCA image captures a meeting of the American Business Women's Association Tacoma chapter at the Winthrop Hotel in 1963, and yet another photo shows a 1938 Convention of Mayors banquet at the hotel's Crystal Ballroom. In 1939, the National Checker Association held its second annual title tournament at the Winthrop; according to the Tacoma Public Library Online Digital Collections, players from across the United States attended to play for the grand prize of an automobile.
The Winthrop was especially busy when it hosted celebrations of Washington's 1939 Golden Jubilee, which celebrated 50 years of statehood and was centered in Tacoma, Sullivan said. ORCA photographs show a Jubilee Queen pageant in the hotel, and local government officials wearing Jubilee hats on the Winthrop's rooftop during the celebrations, which lasted from July 16 to 23, 1939.
Sullivan added that another period of heavy occupancy and profit at the hotel was during World War II when the Winthrop served as a business venue for officials working with the military efforts and development of Fort Lewis just southwest of Tacoma. Civilian defense programs were coordinated at the Winthrop — the Tacoma Public Library's ORCA shows a photograph of Tacoma's Zone Air Raid Wardens meeting at the hotel in April 1943 to discuss air raid preparation in case of enemy attack.
'A lot of those meetings were going on in the hotel,' he said. 'During the war, it was pretty full all the time ... and Fort Lewis during the Second World War was, you know, the largest U.S. Army base in America at the time, so we had a ton of people coming and going during that era.'
Two upper floors were modified into apartments in 1940, a venture that achieved success when housing was in short supply during World War II, according to Denfeld's HistoryLink article. According to the article, the hotel was leased to Western Hotel in 1947, which opened new dining venues in 1949, including the Daffodil Room — a yellow-themed coffee shop with daffodil curtains — and the Sabre Room, a Old English tap room-themed restaurant created by famed restauranteur Victor Bergeron, also known as 'Trader Vic.' In 1963, the Sabre Room was also modified into a nightclub with colorful accents and live music performances.
The hotel also saw local political action. As a young member of the Pierce County Democratic party, Baarsma said, he often met withparty members in the Winthrop's Sabre Room restaurant to discuss their business. Meetings planning the effort for the successful 1970 voter recall of five of the nine members of the Tacoma City Council were held there in the Sabre Room, just down the street from Tacoma's Old City Hall, he added.
The hotel had been experiencing financial struggles for years, but it was hit hard by a lack of downtown attractions and tourists and new highway construction following World War II, Sullivan said. In the 1960s, Interstate 5 was completed, encouraging cars to bypass downtown Tacoma, and the 1965 opening of the Tacoma Mall shifted retail opportunities away from downtown and towards the freeway, he added.
The hotel tried to find new success. The main dining hall was renamed the Three Keys, and in 1964, a Japanese restaurant named the Kokura — after Tacoma's then-sister city in Japan — opened in what had previously been the Sabre Room. Nevertheless, the Winthrop Hotel was sold to Conifer Corp. in 1970 and closed in fall of 1971, according to HistoryLink. In 1973, the Winthrop was converted into affordable-housing apartments after 46 years as a hotel. The HistoryLink article states that the Three Keys and second-floor Presidential Suite were eventually converted into apartments.
Baarsma said the hotel's closing 'was a body blow' that left the downtown area lacking a hotel for over 10 years. Without the Winthrop's large gathering and event spaces, some local culture and festivities struggled to find suitable venues, and some Pierce County Democratic party events, for example, settled for the Rodeway Inn, a local motel, he added.
'Now that the Winthrop was off the table, (there was) a real community effort to try to bring back a hotel, and in the early 1980s, that became the Sheraton, which is now the Murano,' Baarsma said.
The Winthrop changed hands multiple times, and for a brief period there was discussion of restoring the building to reopen as a hotel again, Baarsma said. During his time as mayor in the 2000s, local real estate development company Prium bought the Winthrop for $6.5 million in 2007 and had spoken with him in hopes to restore it. As the 2008 recession hit, the building became affordable housing once again, he said. Prium later went bankrupt and the Winthrop was eventually sold to Redwood Housing Partners for $8.5 million in 2015.
Today, the Winthrop's exterior remains protected by the Tacoma Landmarks Preservation Commission. Any changes to its façade are subject to commission review and approval, McKnight said.
The Crystal Ballroom and penthouse remain intact, though some original features have been covered with vinyl flooring and other cosmetic cover-ups that transformed the interior into modern-day apartments, Sullivan said. Although the materials keep some of the historic floors or walls hidden from sight, they might also work as a protective barrier against wear and tear that could help preserve the building, he added.
Redwood Housing spokesperson Reed Dunn said via email that the historic lobby and Crystal Ballroom remain intact.
The Crystal Ballroom has continued to hold events. Lysandra Ness, principal of of Arlington Elementary in Tacoma, said she was inspired to hold her wedding reception in the Winthrop's Crystal Ballroom on July 13, 1991 after witnessing a 1920's-themed wedding in the same place years before. Her husband and his family are lifelong Tacomans that were proud to host the event in a iconic place of their hometown, she added.
'I have always been inspired by architecture, and it just has that classic beauty,' Ness said. 'To capture that scene of everyone down below and the beautiful chandeliers behind was just magical.'
Her wedding was a community event of its own, Ness said. Her mother worked for Winthrop's management company at the time, Conifer Management, which gifted the venue rental cost to her for the wedding. Further, her mother added accents to her wedding dress — which was inspired by Princess Diana — by hand, another Conifer Management employee worked the bar and dinner for the event, and the best man served as a disc jockey, she added. She said they were secretly married at the courthouse a year before the wedding ceremony and will be celebrating 35 years of marriage this year.
'Everyone came together to help us have the best evening of our lives,' Ness said.
Some original features were simply closed off to the public when it became affordable housing in the 1970s, Sullivan said. When he visited in the late 2000s, decorative cornice work in the lobby was still present, albeit hidden behind a false ceiling, he said, adding that other historic artifacts were hidden behind walls, including a tiled barber shop that still had its chairs and sinks.
'It was kind of ghostly, though, when you go in there, because there wasn't a formal door to get into it, we had to go through a section of wall to get into it,' Sullivan said.
He added the penthouse was also present with its artistic fireplace, although it faced greater exposure to the elements that had worn it down.
McKnight said he has visited the building himself over the years, adding that during one visit he was surprised to find leftover fallout shelter supplies from the Cold War era in the basement.
'There were things like water containers, aid supplies... there were emergency toilets: basically a bucket with some chemicals in it,' McKnight said. 'It reminds us of how much time has passed and how things remain for a long time, like an archaeological site.'
According to the Redwood Housing website, the building was last renovated in 2016 and now has 200 apartment units.
In 2023, The News Tribune reported on a electrical fire in the basement of the building that displaced hundreds of tenants and damaged internal systems, although no damage to the units was reported. Three residents were treated for smoke exposure.
Reached by The News Tribune on Monday, Redwood Housing communications director Reed Dunn said via email that Redwood 'developed a comprehensive, historically significant preservation and revitalization plan that preserved the former hotel as high-quality affordable housing.'
'The redevelopment included the restoration of historic artifacts, new historically compatible windows, the replacement of failing systems, seismic upgrades, elevator modernizations, security improvements, full unit renovations, and an all-inclusive modernization of common areas, including the historic lobby and Crystal Ballroom,' Dunn wrote in the email.
To his knowledge, no celebration is currently planned for the building's centennial, he added.
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