Owner: Historic Merchant’s Café in Seattle will re-open after renovations
Dec 28, 2024, 9:12 AM | Updated: Dec 30, 2024, 5:55 pm
Merchant's Café in Seattle is reportedly closing but only for renovations; the restaurant, on Yesler Way at the foot of James Street, is believed to be the oldest in the city. (Photo: Feliks Banel, KIRO Newsradio)
(Photo: Feliks Banel, KIRO Newsradio)
UPDATE 12/30/24 at 4:15 p.m.: A recent report from the Facebook history group Vanishing Seattle and a story by KUOW Public Radio 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.
ORIGINAL STORY
Merchant’s Café in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood is reportedly closing on New Year’s Eve, according to information the history group Vanishing Seattle posted late Friday on Facebook.
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. What remains unclear is whether the building itself is threatened, or if another operator might take over the space and resume similar operations.
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, which offers some regulatory protection should the building’s owner seek to make significant changes, up to and including demolition.
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.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Feliks Banel has served as KIRO Newsradio’s Resident Historian since 2015, and was originally hired by the radio station in 1991. Read more from Feliks here; subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here; and subscribe to Feliks’ Unsolved Histories podcast here. Feliks frequently posts about Northwest history on his Facebook page; follow him there for previews and updates. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks.
