The MarQueen Hotel in Lower Queen Anne is celebrating its 10th anniversary this October, but the building has a history that stretches back to 1918, when it was built to house and train blacksmiths working at a Ford Model-T factory on the shores of Lake Union.
The MarQueen had been an apartment house since the 1940s before a private group of investors who also own the Inn at Queen Anne a few blocks away bought the property in 1998 and slowly converted it into a hotel, said general manager Sandra Shropshire.
There were still rental tenants when the new owners took over. "We did not kick out anyone at the time," she said. "Most people chose to vacate because of the conversion." But not all. Shropshire said the last long-term apartment renter only left in 2005.
The apartments that were converted into hotel rooms ended up with the same footprints, but it took some work.
"It was pretty run down when they (the new owners) took over," she said of the building. "It had to be polished up quite a bit to bring it back to its original luster."
The rooms have kitchens and hardwood floors, some of the apartments on the ground floor were turned into the Caffe Ladro, and there is also a Jill Bucy Skincare salon in former apartment space.
Like every other business in Seattle, the faltering economy has affected the MarQueen, Shropshire said. "This year has been a struggle, and this summer proved exceptionally troublesome," she said.
But Shropshire has an idea how to counter the trend. "We have to be smarter at what we do," she said.
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