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| Hotel Edmond Meany. University District, Seattle, Wash. “Just off the campus.” Every room a corner room. |
Past Post: Hotel Edmond Meany
December 8th, 2008 @ 1:00 am by Cliffe | Sorted Past Post |
You may recognize Hotel Edmond Meany as Hotel Deca down on NE 45th in the U District. It was opened in 1931 and named after the University of Washington professor and civic leader. Just six years later, the hotel was forced to reorganize under bankruptcy. Meany died in 1935 while preparing for a class. Click on the image for more res.
I dig old photos/pictures of campus back when there were so few buildings and when Red Square was still just a lawn. And when my current work building was still a golf course!
It’s a shame that all of the AY buildings were taken down, as it is evident from this post-card that they didn’t even last thirty years.
There are actually two AYPE buildings that remain on the UW campus. The current Architecture Hall, which originally was named the Fine Arts Building, and Cunningham Hall, which was originally the AYPE Women’s Building.
In 1933, the Seattle Star (a long-gone daily) named this hotel one of the “Seven Wonders of Seattle”, along with the harbor, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, the Ballard Locks, the Boeing airplane factory, the Seattle Art Museum (meaning the one in Volunteer Park), and the Pike Place Market.
Most of the AYPE buildings were designed as temporary. Besides the two that still survive, the Forestry Building made it into the 1930s or so; I believe one other made it into that era (the state money for the fair came with a condition that they build four “permanent” buildings) but I can’t think offhand what it would have been.
There is still the remains of what could be a cool restaurant atop the Edmund Meany/University Tower, except that fire codes prohibit it. When I worked there, we were told that it had been the owner’s penthouse apartment, and the roof was a great place to watch the fireworks
I am the maternal grandson of the original owner of the Meany Hotel. My grandfather, Evro M Becket, owned it from the 30′s until his death in 1960. he lived in the penthouse and I often visited him there as a child. I even worked there during my 1956-1960 Christmas break from Pacific University in Oregon where I still live. For all of his years of ownership, I am distressed to find no mention of him in the early records of the hotel in http://www.historylink.org. Evro M Becket served under Washington Governor Langley as the head of the liquor control commission and the department of transportation. Metal fare tokens from that period have his name on them.