Olympic Hotel

Built in 1924 (Renaissance architecture). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

From the record

“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.”
Wikipedia article Fairmont Olympic Hotel, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 324 National Register listings published here for King County · listed in 1979 · category: Building · built in 1924, Renaissance architecture, by Bebb and Gould.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. 1200--1220 4th Ave., Seattle, 98101
When was it listed? June 1979
Category. building
Census division. Seattle
When was it built? 1924
Architectural style. Renaissance architecture
Architect. Bebb and Gould
National Register reference number. 79002538 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

1 since 2017

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Olympic Hotel in 2017, burning about 4 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
24 September 2017	Debris and open burning	4.3 acres	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	8TH AVE

Every fire recorded in King County

Mines and quarries near this property

2 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 2 workings within 5 miles of Olympic Hotel: 2 past producers. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Unnamed Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
	Unnamed Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in King County

Storms near this property

8 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Seattle, the town this property stands in, in 8 storm reports between 1996 and 2015: 2 lightning, 1 flood, 1 thunderstorm wind, 1 tornado. The reports record 1 death. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
December 2006	Flash Flood	Seattle	1 killed, $750,000	In the Madison Valley area of Seattle, heavy rainfall produced excessive street runoff, flooding about 25 basements and drowning one woman trapped in her basement by rapidly rising water.
February 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Seattle	$25,000	A microburst with winds estimated at 50 mph hit West Seattle knocking down a few trees, damaging two homes and a car.
October 2015	Heavy Rain	Seattle	$10,000	In Shoreline, heavy rainfall caused a section of concrete to give way in the tunnel leading to a Metro bus barn under the I-5 HOV lanes between 165th and 175th Streets. Repairs to those lanes were completed two days later.
July 2013	Lightning	Seattle	$5,000	One lightning strike damaged a transformer, which knocked out power to customers in Shoreline.
December 1996	Lightning	Seattle	$3,500	no account filed
May 2010	Funnel Cloud	Seattle	-	Some bicycles were tossed and a tent blew apart at Genesee Park in the Rainier Valley of Seattle.
June 2001	Tornado (F0)	Seattle	-	A very weak tornado tossed a teacher and a few children into the air. No one was injured.
September 1996	Flood	Seattle	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in King County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Northern Life Tower	under 500 feet	1975
Continental Hotel	under 500 feet	2024
YWCA Building-Seattle	under 500 feet	2006
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Seattle Branch	under 500 feet	2013
Skinner Building	under 500 feet	1978
1411 Fourth Avenue Building	0.1 miles	1991

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 79002538 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
King County	All 324 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.