Palihotel opens in historic building by Pike Place Market

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.

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.

Courtesy of Palihotel

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.

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).

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.

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.

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