Historic Hotels & Inns in Washington

Ways in

Themes in Washington

Seattle’s 1900s–1920s hotels

The buildings of Seattle’s historic hotels date from 1900 to 1927. The earliest stand by Pike Place Market and in Belltown: the 1900 Colonnade Hotel, now Palihotel Seattle; the Moore Hotel, opened in 1907; and the Ace, a 1909 workers’ hotel. In 1909, the year of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, the Hotel Sorrento opened on First Hill and the College Inn went up across from the fair on the University of Washington campus, and the 1920s added the Fairmont Olympic (1924), the Claremont (1926), now Hotel Ändra, and the Bergonian (1927), now the Mayflower Park. Beyond the city, McMenamins has turned Bothell’s 1931 Anderson School, Tacoma’s Elks Temple of 1915–16 and Centralia’s 1908 Olympic Club into hotels.

Victorian Port Townsend and the islands

Port Townsend’s 1889–90 railroad boom left a National Historic Landmark district of brick blocks and Queen Anne houses: the Palace Hotel and the Bishop Hotel downtown, and the Old Consulate Inn and The Starrett House on the bluff. Across the water, John S. McMillin’s Hotel de Haro, which the resort dates to 1886, anchors Roche Harbor on San Juan Island, the Orcas Hotel (1900–04) stands above the Orcas Island ferry landing, and the Captain Whidbey is a 1907 madrona-log inn on Penn Cove. On the mainland, the 1907 Hotel Planter faces La Conner’s waterfront street.

Mountain and rain forest lodges

Mount Rainier National Park has two inns from 1916–17: Paradise Inn, a National Historic Landmark with 121 rooms that opens each summer, and the National Park Inn at Longmire, open year-round. On the Olympic Peninsula, Lake Crescent Lodge in Olympic National Park began as Singer’s Lake Crescent Tavern in 1914–15, and Lake Quinault Lodge in Olympic National Forest was built in 53 days in 1926; Franklin D. Roosevelt lunched there in 1937. Expect shared baths in the historic rooms at Paradise Inn and Lake Crescent.

Spokane and the Walla Walla wine country

Spokane rebuilt in brick after its 1889 fire: The Louie fills two 1890 blocks where Louis Davenport ran his first restaurant, and across the street his 1914 Davenport Hotel, designed by Kirtland Cutter, was restored and reopened in 2002. The Montvale, on West First Avenue, is one of the city’s oldest surviving single-room-occupancy hotels. In the southeast, Walla Walla’s citizens bought stock to build the 1928 Marcus Whitman Hotel, which has its own wine tasting rooms, and in Dayton, Hotel Hardware reopened in 2024 in brewer Jacob Weinhard’s brick saloon building on Main Street.

Road trip

Seattle to Lake Crescent, inn to inn

Seattle

Start with two nights in Seattle, at a 1920s hotel downtown or a 1900s hotel by Pike Place Market; our Seattle guide covers all 11.

Coupeville

Head north to Whidbey Island and the Captain Whidbey, a 1907 madrona-log inn on Penn Cove; ask for a room in the lodge.

Port Townsend

Take the 35-minute ferry from Coupeville, reserved ahead, to Port Townsend, and stay in an 1889 building on Water Street or a Queen Anne B&B on the bluff from our Port Townsend guide.

Lake Crescent

End at Lake Crescent Lodge in Olympic National Park, begun as Singer’s Lake Crescent Tavern in 1914–15; its historic lodge rooms share baths and take guests 18 and up, and the lodge is seasonal (its 2026 season runs April 17 to January 1, 2027).

Context

History and architecture

Washington’s historic hotels follow its booms. The oldest are on the water: the Kindred family built their Willapa Bay farmhouse in 1885 as a home and haven for travelers, and John S. McMillin’s Hotel de Haro at the Roche Harbor lime works dates to 1886. Port Townsend’s 1889–90 railroad boom filled Water Street with brick blocks and the bluff with Queen Anne houses, then stopped when it became clear the town would not be a railroad terminus. Spokane rebuilt in brick after its 1889 fire, the year Washington became the 42nd state. Seattle’s College Inn went up for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, and in the 1920s thousands of local shareholders financed the Olympic Hotel (1924), while Walla Walla’s citizens bought stock for the Marcus Whitman (1928). In the mountains, the Rainier National Park Company opened Paradise Inn in 1917, and Lake Quinault Lodge went up in 53 days in 1926.