Portions of this story are courtesy MyNorthwest.com
A recent report from the Facebook history group Vanishing Seattle that Merchant’s Café in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood is closing on New Year’s Eve is incorrect, according to the bar.
Merchant’s Cafe is simply closing for renovations, where they will be upgrading bathrooms, piping, and electrical. They hope to reopen by March 1.
The building, at 109 Yesler Way, dates to around 1890 – after the Great Seattle Fire – and is believed to be the longest continuously operated restaurant and watering hole in the city.
Merchant’s Café is saturated with Seattle history. It was in that same spot, in an earlier structure which stood on the site, where the one and only photograph of Chief Seattle was created by Edward Sammis in 1865.
Stories of what has taken place inside the current three-story building over the past 130 years are a big part of its charm, and play a significant role in how current operator Darcy Hanson promotes the restaurant and bar, as well as the rooms for rent upstairs. Those upstairs rooms reportedly housed sex workers for decades in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
“A lot of stuff in here is original,” Hanson told KIRO Newsradio on a tour of the second floor in January. Hanson pointed out dull brass hardware attached to the side of the door frame which still opens and closes the transom window above the door.
“It’s original, a lot of this, in all these apartments,” Hanson said.
While the structure is not designated as an official City of Seattle landmark, it is located within the Pioneer Square Preservation District.
Merchant Café's historic significance is well documented by the City of Seattle. However, as recent decisions by the City of Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board about Memorial Stadium and by the City of Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections about the old Mama’s Mexican Kitchen have shown, historic significance in Seattle often results in only a readily dispatched minor regulatory nuisance for a building’s owner, and what amounts to a performative delay in demolition proceedings.
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