The Fairmont Olympic Hotel, originally The Olympic Hotel, is a luxury hotel in downtown Seattle, Washington. A historic landmark, the hotel was built on the original site of the University of Washington's campus.[2] The hotel opened in 1924, and in 1979, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[3]
History
After World War I, Seattle's Chamber of Commerce appointed a committee to work toward the goal of bringing a world-class hotel to the city. The committee identified an undeveloped portion of the city's Metropolitan Tract, a downtown area covering four blocks, as an ideal location for a new hotel. The Tract was also known as Denny's Knoll, after Arthur A. Denny, one of Seattle's founders, who had donated the land for the Territorial University, which would later become the University of Washington.[4]
The university had relocated to a campus north of Portage Bay