Arctic Club Hotel

A Gold Rush club left this gem behind

In the early 1900s, some of the lucky prospectors who struck it rich in the Klondike and Alaska gold rushes created an elite Seattle social group known as the Arctic Club. Their first downtown headquarters was in what is now the Morrison Hotel. But in 1916 the club hired architect A. Warren Gould to design something grander where they could socialize, drink, and make deals.

The Beaux-Arts style Arctic Club building Gould created was arctic-inspired and rich in amenities. Its main corridors were clad in fine Alaskan marble. Twenty-seven tusked, terracotta walrus heads dotted the third-floor exterior. And the terracotta panels covering the building’s steel-reinforced concrete frame weren’t just off-white, they were the first in Seattle to feature colors – teal blue and ochre. Inside, there was a ladies’ lounge, billiard and card rooms, a barber shop, a bowling alley, meeting and sleeping rooms, and a rooftop garden. Several restorations later, the polar bear over the main entrance is long gone, but the walrus heads remain, as do the framed photos of the men who were club members. The wooden lobby bar was stolen, the story goes, in the dead of night from the previous location and nonchalantly reinstalled here overnight. The 3,600-square-foot, formal dining room is still here too. Known today as the Northern Lights Dome Room, it dazzles with a grand chandelier, carved wood support structures, and a circular wood frieze dense with hand-carved fruits and vegetables. Above it all is a stunning, leaded glass dome ceiling lit to evoke the Northern Lights.

The building may also be haunted. In 1936, Congressman Marion Zioncheck jumped to his death from his office on the 5th floor, landing directly in front of the car in which his wife was sitting. “I haven’t seen his ghost,” says Andy Spaulding, the hotel’s assistant manager, “but he might visit guests staying in what are now rooms 509, 511, or 513.”

Address 700 3rd Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104, +1 (206) 340-0340, www.hilton.com/en/ hotels/seaacdt-the-arctic-club-seattle | Getting there Bus D, 4, 24 to 3rd Avenue & Cherry Street; Light Rail to Pioneer Square (1 Line) | Hours Lobby unrestricted, inquire at front desk about Dome Room | Tip Stop by the Lotte Hotel Seattle to see the ballroom. Located in a former beaux art church sanctuary, this space has a 63-foot dome, stained glass windows, and a pipe organ (809 5th Avenue, www.lottehotel.com/seattle-hotel/en.html).