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Last year, Los Angeles chain Palihotel announced its first its first expansion outside of California: A historic renovation of the Colonnade Hotel, first built in 1898. The Colonnade, located across the street from Pike Place Market, is both a city landmark and on the National Registry of Historic Places, and its reimagining aimed to evoke its original charm.
Palihotel matched its original 96-room count and added awnings on Pine Street that nod toward some that were removed during a street widening, including an understated hotel entrance that stacks a neon script above a metal awning. The First Avenue storefronts were also preserved.
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While sometimes historic restorations can tend toward modern interiors, Palihotel leans into a look that plays with the building’s vintage without sacrificing traditional amenities. It starts in the common areas, starting with the check-in area, decked out in green and preserving building details like archways.
It’s not a total time capsule—wall hangings, the style of paintings, and even period stuff like stacks of vintage luggage are certainly contemporary trends—but it creates a historic vibe, letting visitors feel that they’re entering a hotel built more than a century ago rather than a recent rehab.
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The Hart and the Hunter restaurant, while certainly sounding like a newer-style lounge, nods to an old diner look in the center, with a long row two-top booths, larger tables, and bar seating in a checkerboard-tiled space. It’s surrounded by an open kitchen on one side and on the other, a bar and a coffee shop, labeled above in glass in a way and evoking an old-timey train station. The coffee shop also provides service to the outside world via exterior window.
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Set aside from the more bustling vibe of the diner, a fireside lounge is surrounded by bookshelves (with backwards books, apparently just for show but nonetheless a very conspicuous reminder that it’s not a real library). Visitors can bring their cocktails from the restaurant here, much like at the Sorrento but with no fireside service (yet).
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The rooms themselves continue the motif. While flat-screen TVs become a necessary deviation from the rest of the feel, the green color theme is a respite from standard neutral hotel walls. Where applicable, original fireplaces have been preserved and repurposed as shelves or minibars. Smeg mini-fridges and kettles, plus furniture—floral headboards, steamer-trunk-esque desk drawers—blend into the look.
Rooms, which start at about $120 a night, have not just the standard king or queen bed options, but two-twin rooms for buddies traveling together, including some rooms with bunk beds.
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The Colonnade Hotel building operated for quite some time as Plymouth Housing Group’s Gatewood Apartments, which also housed their rental offices. Plymouth sold the property in March 2017 for $2.5 million, county records show.