The six-story Publix Hotel, across the street from Uwajimaya, has stood vacant for years, with a haunted-castle grandeur.
I first noticed it while exploring the International District in high school. It was stained and apparently disintegrating, and pigeons had nested in its ornate metal awning, the etched word “Publix” coated in dirty feathers. Angular Tudor-Gothic ornaments topped a roof that could easily have sheltered a wizard. I’d sometimes get off my bike on the corner of King Street and Fifth Avenue South and look up at its empty windows like you look in someone’s eyes when you can’t tell what they’re thinking about.
Dozens of buildings like the Publix, called single room occupancies (SRO), went up in Seattle in the late 1800s and early 1900s, providing modest accommodations for “workingmen and transient laborers.” The Publix was designed by John L. McCauley, architect of a variety of local buildings, most of which no longer exist, according to a report compiled by the National Park Service’s Register of Historic Places. Built in 1928, the Publix was owned by Rainier Heat and Power, which operated a steam plant in what is now Uwajimaya’s parking lot…
