Arctic Club Hotel

written by Lauren Kramer
photography by Arctic Club Hotel

It’s a special treat to stay in a building that’s on the National Register of Historic Places, and at the Arctic Club Hotel in the heart of downtown Seattle, history surrounds you with pomp, circumstance and privilege. This was the social venue for successful men who’d returned to Seattle after the Klondike Gold Rush, and they met here to share their stories of adventure, to network and to dream up projects that turned Seattle into a West Coast metropolis. When the building became a hotel in 2006, its ten floors were transformed into boutique hotel rooms outfitted with careful attention to detail. Spend a night and you take a graceful step back in time, exploring the beauty of 1917 architecture, where intricate ornamental cornices, artistic frescos, Alaskan marble flooring and sculptured terracotta walrus heads deliver a sense of grandeur, importance and arrival.

A tasteful guest room at Arctic Club Hotel.

ACCOMMODATIONS

With 102 rooms on its ten floors, the Arctic Club Hotel still manages to feel intimate, personal and boutique. Rooms feature 12-foot ceilings and are thoughtfully outfitted with bathrobes, plush linens, quality teas and coffees and aromatic rosemary geranium bathing products in the bathrooms. From the lighting to the artwork and the crown moldings, everything in the rooms reflects the character, dignity and age of the building.

DINING

The hotel offers a complimentary hot breakfast in Juno, the breakfast room, but the star of the dining show is the Polar Bar on the main floor, an old-world, classy establishment where drinks and food are served daily 3–11 p.m. We loved the cocktail list, which is full of delicious, original cocktails made by bartender Mike Robertson, who has been a popular fixture at the hotel for years. Try the Ginger Rogers, a heavenly cocktail made with vodka, lavender and ginger liqueur. The menu offers a good selection of burgers, salads and shared plates, and portions are generous and well-priced.

HISTORY

A stay at the Arctic Club Hotel is about stepping back in time. The lobby walls are lined with portraits of the club’s founding members, and the success they venerated is evidenced in the building’s many intricate, artistic features. There are ornamental niches, elaborately carved ceilings and an impressive wedding and event space with Rococo gilding and an exquisite, stained-glass domed ceiling. The photographic portraits are by Edward Curtis, a photographer who also took special interest in the Indigenous people he met on his travels to the Yukon. The juxtaposition of the solemn faces of successful Seattleites with the mixture of pride and vulnerability on the faces of the Indigenous people is pause for thought.