Panama Hotel (Seattle)

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View of the hotel building from the northwest

The Panama Hotel is a listed hotel in a former Japanese district ( Japantown , also: Nihonmachi , today: International District ) of Seattle . The building was built in 1910 and played an important role in the Japanese community in Seattle during the first half of the 20th century, and especially during the internment of Japanese Americans during the Pacific War . It is still used as a hotel today.

history

The Panama Hotel Tea & Coffee House opened in 2001
View through the glass window set into the floor of today's coffee house to the suitcases stored by interned Japanese Americans

construction

The Panama Hotel in 1910 with a design by 1894 immigrated to the US Japanese architect Sabro Ozasa at 605 South Main Street corner Six Avenue South built and opened its operation in early 1911. The building had a basement and five stories above ground and was using reinforced Concrete and bricks erected. The floor plan was 18 × 36 meters (exactly: 60 × 120 feet ), and the construction cost about USD 50,000. Six shops, accessible from the north, were set up on the lower floor. Over the years there have been many different retailers and service providers - including doctors, photo studios, translators and life insurers. Office space was available on the upper floor and the top three floors accommodated the hotel with its 101 rooms and shared bathrooms and toilets on each floor. In 1914, a similarly sized building was added to the south rear - the Northern Pacific Hotel .

The hotel was built by the West Coast Building Company , later owners were the Sound Trading Investment Company (1915-1920) and the Enterprise Investment Company (1920-1938). In 1938, Sanjiro Hori and his son Takashi acquired the building. In 1985 the Hori family sold the property to Jan Johnson, who still manages it today.

Bathhouse

A Japanese bathhouse ( Sento ) was set up in the basement of the building in 1916 . This bathhouse, which was only referred to as a laundry due to incidents of outside discrimination (but with an attached laundry), became a central meeting point for the Japanese neighborhood residents. The bathhouse operating under the name “Hashidate Yu” was in operation until the mid-1960s and is now completely preserved in its original state. It is one of only two bathhouses of its type left in the United States. It is the oldest surviving bathhouse in the country.

Internment period

The internment of Americans of Japanese descent began in 1942 after the American President issued Executive Order 9066 as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor . The Japanese community in Seattle was briefly admitted to camp (War Relocation Center). Most of those affected were initially a warehouse in Puyallup ( Camp Harmony assigned) and consequently in the Minidoka County to Idaho spent. The then owner of the Panama Hotel , Takashi Hori, who was interned himself, allowed families from Nihonmachi to store excess luggage in the hotel basement. After release from internment, the majority of these stored parts were picked up again, but around 50 suitcases are still in the basement of the house. In the 1990s, some of these exhibits were loaned out for exhibitions at the Migration Museum on Ellis Island and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles .

accident

In 1964, during construction work on nearby Interstate 5, there was an accident: A 25-ton construction site vehicle rolled down the steeply sloping South Main Street without braking and rammed the northeast corner of the Panama Hotel . The impact was so severe that the north side (front side) of the hotel was torn open up to the third window and the east side up to the first window. The necessary construction work was taken as an opportunity to modernize the facade and the retail stores.

Coffeehouse

The Panama Hotel Tea & Coffee House was opened on the ground floor in September 2011 under Jan Johnson . From here you can see the cellar with the luggage of the Japanese interned in 1942 through a glass window set into the floor, as well as reach the former bathhouse via a staircase. As in the hotel rooms, exhibits from the early 20th century - pieces of furniture, lamps, Japanese art, Japanese dolls, photos - are on display or in use in the coffee house.

Monument protection

In 2006 the Panama Hotel was granted National Historic Landmark status . In 2015, the building was also granted further protection: the National Trust for Historic Preservation included it as the first property in Seattle on its list of National Treasures . The declaration of admission was made on April 9, 2015 as part of a ceremony. a. National Trust President Stephanie Meeks, Congressman Jim McDermott, and Seattle's Deputy Mayor Hyeok Kim attended.

reception

The Panama Hotel is the theme of the novel "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet". The work, written by Jamie Ford in 2009 and edited by Ballantine Books, has won multiple awards and has been translated into 34 languages. The novel deals with the love story between the Chinese-American boy Henry Lee and the Japanese-American girl Keiko Okabe during the internment period in World War II. Internment separates the two; the Okabe family - like many others - put luggage in the Panama Hotel .

Web links

Commons : Panama Hotel  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Priscilla Vegars, Asian American Sites and Museum Exhibits , in: Xiaojian Zhao and Edward JW Park, Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History , ABC-CLIO, 2013, ISBN 978-1-59884-2401 , P. 97 (English)
  2. ↑ Sabro Ozasa was the first architect of Asian origin who worked in Seattle. In addition to the Panama Hotel , he designed a. a. the Gaffney and Hyde apartment building (1910), the Cascade Investment House (1910) and the Specie Bank of Seattle building (1911, meanwhile demolished)
  3. ^ Geoff Montes, Introducing the Panama Hotel, A Bittersweet Symbol of Hope , Apr. 9, 2015, National Trust for Historic Preservation.
  4. ↑ Harriet Baskas, Washington Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff , Rowman & Littlefield, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7627-6900-1 , p. 36 (English)
  5. ↑ Leonie Sandercock, Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History , California studies in critical human geography , Volume 2, University of California Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-520-20735-6 , p. 62 (English)
  6. ↑ Sihanouk Mariona, Japantown's Panama Hotel hides a treasure trove of history , June 6, 2012, The Seattle Globalist (English)
  7. ↑ a b c Jack Broom, Seattle's Panama Hotel deemed a National Treasure , July 27, 2015, The Seattle Times (English)
  8. ↑ Kyle Jensen, Seattle's Panama Hotel is a national treasure that needs a new owner , April 13, 2015, SeattlePI (English)
  9. ↑ Marc Stiles, Seattle International District's Panama Hotel deemed 'national treasure' , June 12, 2015, Puget Sound Business Journal.
  10. ↑ The Panama Hotel , April 19, 2015, Historic Seattle (English)

Coordinates: 47 ° 35 '59.6 "  N , 122 ° 19' 33.2"  W.