Seattle Profile; S.W. Thurston

You You KCDS TV presents a visit with Seabird Theston, one of the series of programs to provide a Seattle

profile. Our host is Hogue Sullivan. Hello, I'm Hogue Sullivan, welcoming you again to Seattle Profile, program on which we talk to distinguished citizens of our city and those who've had a part in its growth and certainly today's guest, Mr. S. W. Theston, founder, chairman of Western International Hotel, and have a very interesting story to tell us and I think we can all learn something. Mr. Theston, you like many other Seattleites were not born here, where did you come from and how did you happen to end up in the Great North West. I was born in Iceland and I arrived in Grafton, North Dakota. First from my team from Iceland that was only about a year and a half or two years old so I don't remember very much about it. Then we left Grafton, North Dakota in 1898, arrived in Glein, Washington, and then we settled in a little town called Marietta, which is five miles north of Bellingham. I would certainly say from going from

Iceland to North Dakota to the Great North West you were making good progress. What did you do in Blaine? Did you go to school there? I didn't go to school in Bellingham or in Marietta, and then I went to work in the Chino Mills in Ferndale. I was 12 years old. Still have all your fingers? Still have all my fingers. Good for you. I worked there for a number of years and I became acquainted with a Ringling Brothers Circus Acrobat. He induced me to leave the mills and go into show business with him. We wound up at the Orphium Circus and at that time was where the present County City Building is. That was the end of my career, though, as an Acrobat. He got a show business. He'd become

indisposed at night and I was doing the top stump and turning summer sets and so forth. Off his shoulders and he'd become indisposed. That was the end of the show business as far as I was concerned and I told him so. We might fall into the hotel business. Then I went the next morning. I wasn't broke. I had money that I had saved up from the Chino Mills and I inquired at an employment office. What kind of a position might be available for an info like myself? Retired Acrobat. That's right. They recommended the position at the National Hotel. Where was this hotel? In the National Hotel. It was located where the part of the Norton Building is and the part of the Exchange Building is. Right in the middle of the block between Narian and Columbia. And who was in

charge of our pretty Mr. Hotel? Mrs. Mulpy was the owner of it and her son Harold Mulpy was working there, part -time. And he and I had become very well acquainted. I worked there from 193 until 1910. Did you have a chance to get exposed to the various phases even though it was a small hotel of the operation? I learned the hotel business from the ground up. I did everything including a posturing the furniture and laying the carpets, paper in the rooms, taking care of all of the mechanical. So then I become thoroughly acquainted with the hotel business. And the new Mr. Mulpy decided to strike out on your own? That's it. I've heard where there was a possibility of renting the Sullivan Building, which was an office building at that time, and turned it into a hotel. I put hot and cold water and steam heat and a telephone in a room. And that made a

modern hotel as there was in the town. Well, there's a little unusual to take an office building and convert it into a hotel. Yes, it's very much so. Have you ever done that since? Several times I've built a hotel since and designed them. So that was the first one that I ever changed over from an office building though. Then you went into several other hotels. I will pin you down and remember how all of them. Yes, we were some of the others. In 1911, when we opened the right hotel, then we took in 1912 the hotel, adjoining it called the Brunswick Hotel. In 1914, we took the Stevens Hotel and the Rainier Grand Hotel. And so we had four hotels right there together. In 1915 or 16, we

took the New Richmond Hotel, which was then the largest hotel that we had by far. And in fact, it was the largest hotel in the town, and it contained about 300 rooms. Did you personally do anything to start building the clientele or seeking out the outside hotel? I had learned in the early operation of the hotels to ride the trains. From Tacoma into Seattle, sometimes all the way from Portland. And I'd solicit the patternies for our hotels. I'd ride the boats from Victoria into Seattle. So this thing, our hotel business. I had a free bus, the best bus in the town. And we'd meet them at the docks and the depots. So in the meantime, while I was getting acquainted with the hotel patternage through the boats and the trains, I'd become acquainted with all the taxi cab drivers and the fellows that worked on

the trains and the boats, the porters, the purses, and so forth. So I was a friend of theirs. And so when we started our hotels, we had all these people boosting for us. Sounds like a good secret of success. So in every career of such a year, I guess you can say there are a number of turning points. And didn't you have a rather serious happenstance from 1920 or 21? Yes, we did. We had in 1920, we bought the Lincoln Hotel. And in April, our 6th of 2021, it was burned down by an arsonist. And we had a very serious experience there. There were five lives lost. And you had a bunch of guests without a place to stay, too, didn't you? And there were 300 guests in the hotel at that time. So I spent the whole night sending

those guests to their respective hotels that we had, including the New Richmond. And we had four hotels that we had taken over on the 1st of April, Uptown, which was the Georgia, the Georgian annex, the McCay apartments and the Imperial. On our screen right now, we're looking at a picture of the former Lincoln Hotel, which I think is located right in the same block where they're tearing down, the Elks building and so forth to make room for the Seattle 1st National. Correct. It was on 4th and Madison. Or the Circus. I occupied that double service there. Or the service station was. But did you make any effort to rebuild this hotel? No, we didn't. That was very anxious to get out of the mess as soon as I had passed. I could. And at the morning, following morning, I got up at 7 o 'clock after an hour's rest and called up my banker, which I owed $100 ,000 to, which was a big loan in those days. And I just got

through paying all the contractors off for the $150 ,000 worth of improvements that we had put into the Lincoln. Just the night before. I told him that to tell his board of directors that was very true, actually, was in the loan officer that I dealt with. To tell his board of directors that I thought I had to sail for the property, that they would have their $100 ,000 property inside of 30 days, if my sail would be successful. When I happened to know at the time of that, and that I bought it, that the Elks Club, they were anxious to buy it. So I figured that I had a good customer there. And at 8 o 'clock that morning, I actually tell him two acts. What my ideas were, I went down to Mr. Broderick, and told Mr. Broderick that he, of course, knew what happened to the Lincoln.

I want to sell the property. I want you to handle it. And the customer is the Elks Club. You get me $100 ,000 cash out of it. We agreed upon a nominal commission for the services. He said, fine. How do the best I can? And inside of 15 days, I think it was. He had a sword, and I had my bank paid off, and felt a good deal more at ease. All real estate brokers, which they had deals put together. They were that easy. How about the insurance on this building? The insurance agents that I had told me that if I would just wait until next week, and put on the insurance, then they would have a clearance from the building department and the fire department, and a record of the improvements that I had put into the property, so that I could get a much

lower rate on the insurance. That sounded reasonable. I said, okay. That we ended burn. And so I was short about $190 ,000. A bit of a blow to a promising hotel career. And I had several other hotels, and they were very successful at that time. I know from talking to some of your compatriots, Mr. Thurston, that all, yes, in that hotel were repaid for their losses. Well, there was no real legal liability, but I think. It was a corner's jury that I sat on for 10 days. And I was accused, of course, of having done everything that was wrong in the hotel. And finally, on the 10th day, when I got the building department and the fire department, and the health department on the stand, they told what I had done and done the way more than they had ever asked me to do. And that's what exonerated me from any liability. Where were you

when you got this news? I got the news when the corner's jury was through the testimony that afternoon I went up to the Liberty Theater up in the balcony and just was so tired, I just wanted to take a rest. I went to sound asleep until 8 o 'clock that night, and I came down to my office in the new Richmond Hotel at that time. But it was shaking hands with me and congratulating me. I said, what for? I didn't even forgot about the place. I didn't see that. I was very excited. Let's go on to a couple of other milestones. I think you mentioned one of your first big hotel ventures was the Benjamin Franklin. Right. What 19? It was built for us and opened in 1929, I think it was. Well, we have some shots. We'll look at a couple of things on our screen here, the first of which, of course, is your partner, Mr. Harold Maltby, driving vintage vehicle. That's right. That's car. The third automobile, I think, in the state of Washington.

This would have been all this picture as I guess around 1980. It was a steamer and I used to lug water into it and load it up before you went off. Next, we have an ad that says 10 good hotels, Maltby and Thurston. I won't ask you the name all of these, but this one of your first promotional ventures as far as advertising the hotel. I think it was. We had accumulated 10 hotels and advertising together, you know. Can you give me an idea of the rates on these fine 10 hotels? Well, they arranged from $75 cents to a dollar and some of them were even the national, it was only $0 .50. The new rich and the right, when we opened that up, we had $0 .75 cents and at $0 .25 more, because I had a telephone in every room and there's a modern hotel. Plus the free bus, huh? That's the idea. We're going to take a look at now this picture I guess was taken just after the Benjamin Franklin opened

one of the original shots. And I think we have some coming up with the interior that looks like the lobby. Could be. I think we can see a little resemblance to the present lobby although there have been monumental changes. Troy Himmelman was our manager and Tony Almond was our assistant manager. Mr. Himmelman is still with us, Mr. Almondock is not retired. There's another shot at the lobster. Carlson, he was a page boy at the Benjamin Franklin. At the Benjamin Franklin when he opened it up, he's now a president of the Western International. There's one last shot of the interior that looks like one of the dining areas. And then of course I guess we can't go on without showing the Century Plaza, which shows I'd say that's going to be a big jump as far as hotel operations. And you just opened that hotel recently didn't you? That's right, just last month. And the first, yes. We'll go back a little bit to another point of decision or an important situation as far as you and Western hotels are concerned. The famous

Yakima meeting, could you give us some of the circumstances involved in this? Yes. And we were interested in promoting what is now the Shannuk Hotel. And I had designed the hotel. And there just came in just at the time when the depression came along. And there was 30. And Mr. Von Herberg was the owner at that time. But mortgage people, they backed away from any of their own. So it stood there for many, many years just as a skeleton. And the citizens got together. And they finished it and opened it up. And there's now the Shannuk Hotel in the very successful hotel. It wasn't there a meeting of several people who were to go on in the hotel business. That's right, you were involved in it. Mr. Tupar and Mr. Smiths, they were there. And they were talking about building another hotel in Yakima. Now which Mr. Smith is this? His Peter Smith. Of

the Berlin Fiebering Company, yes. And we met in the coffee shop at the commercial hotel. And I said to Mr. Tupar, I said, why don't we sit down and talk this over and get together rather than to be competing with each other? And Mr. Tupar, he thought that was a fine idea. And in fact, he had the same idea himself. And Mr. Smith agreed. The concoct, the basis there of the Western Hotels Incorporator. So everybody would put in all of our Hotels. They had the two in Bellingham, two in Olympia. And as Mr. Smith did, Mr. Tupar had the cascading or nachee. It just completed that. And he was interested in the hunger put here in town.

But he was a very fine organizer and very energetic man. Well, it was a pretty big situation. The greatest partners I ever had. A pretty big situation to put together over a cup of coffee. That's right. And there was a lot of cup of coffee. I was going to say it sounded like it. Then you did a little branching out. I know you were doing some of this now, but didn't you do some contract feeding, aside from the hotel business? Well, he had the Mount Nomah and the Benson and the Porton. We had acquired all in just a few years before that. And our manager there, he opened the Timberline Lodge for the opening of the Bonneville Dam, I think it was. And President Rose felt was there. We furnished it completely. Engineered the banquet. We furnished it out of the morning. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But the stuff here from

some of the supply companies and that was the beginning. Then we took on the commercial feeding there. And we're now having quite a substantial commercial feeding establishments throughout the country. And I guess the next big step was sort of moving out of state a little bit, wasn't it? Did you go into California? Well, then we went into San Francisco yesterday. We bought the Sir Francis Drake Hotel and took it over the day before the Pearl Harbor War started. And I came up to San Francisco to see Porton coming down the elevator and heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been blowing up. To myself, my gracious San Francisco might be next in here. We just took on the hotel and that was a big obligation. And we had all worked out very nicely. And then we acquired the St. Francis in 1945. I think it was.

This was in 1941 or two in that war. And then they acquired the Fittu building, which is a medical dental building, right across from there, right across from this St. Francis, and it fills in the rest of the block where this Sir Francis Drake is. So we have quite a substantial orderings there. Let's go back to you, Mr. S. W. Thurston, founder, chairman of Western International Hotels. I understand that you, over a period of time, have done the architectural work. Well, I hadn't done a architecture work because we had to make the layout of several of these hotels we built. And I took a lesson in correspondence lesson and spent a lot of time there when the school was there. But didn't you have something to do with several local operations? Well, I helped out from the mini. Yes, I designed that.

And wasn't that hotel quite unique in its time for having so many outside rooms? That's right. Every room was a corner room. I told my architect, we want all the corner rooms we can get, we want a tall building, because we have the view, and that's always sailable. And I think it was Welton Beckett, who was now in the leading architects in Los Angeles, was a young fellow then working in Mr. Remer's office. He came into the office where I was working on the board with Mr. Remer. And he had what looked like a spool with a lot of notches in it. He said, don't mess with what you want to do. You're going to scare somebody around them on the window and make a lot of noise and scare somebody out. No, he says, there's, you just put the inside of that, and we have every room a corner room. And that's how that thing was hatched out. Also, I think you had something to do with the athletic club. Yes, we did. I laid out

all the rooms in there. And the athletic club, the upper part of that, there were a whole building. I know there's another facet of your talents that I'd like to hear about as the, your experience with car building. Yes. The side that I would prove on those days, and we had to drive all the time. We didn't have the airplanes we have now. And I was always too anxious to get there, so I didn't want to wait for the trains. So I bought a Ducenberg chassis. And the Ducenberg engines were all being made by Fred and August Ducenberg and Indianapolis for the leading racetracks of the country, which included the Tacoma racetrack. So I thought, well, I'd give myself a real chassis there, you know. And then I'd designed the car. The body and had that built here. And I had a swivel underneath the front seats and a 42 -inch

door, so I could move the front seat backward and forward, and there I had two seats in the back. And that was a bit of the same as the seats are now. That's right. And now they just form the backs, the back of the front seat, you know, and climb in. What other unique things did you have in this car? Did you get a chance to test it on the racetrack? Oh, well, the only place I could open it up was a two -mile stretch between Mount Vernon and Chukenut, because it was perfectly straight. And I tried it out there a couple of times. I got it up to 93 miles an hour. I was going to say since this happened in 1921, we probably won't have any trouble from the Washington State Patrol. I didn't have any trouble with that. I probably couldn't catch you. Let's go into a hotel operation a little bit, Mr. Thurston. As far as I know, I think during the depression, over 90 % of the hotels were in some kind of trouble. And it seems to me you've taken hotels that were possibly not doing too well and within a quite a short time, I've turned the corner and made them profitable.

Could you give us some of the clues on how you do this? Well, first thing I always wanted to get the finest plant that is in the form of a hotel that as far as modern facilities were concerned, so that I would have a good plant to sell. And secondly, good housekeeping, I think, is the fundamental of our business. So I was very meticulous about seeing that the housekeeping was good. And the third is codeus and efficient service. And I want to thank all my employees how well they cooperated with me in trying to bring that about. Also, I would think

that you've had some pretty good personnel as far as managers. Did you give all your managers a free hand as far as the operation? I give them managers. As long as they keep the company. A free hand, as long as these fundamentals are kept up to see. And then that in turn helped me build that organization. And now I just like Mr. Carlson, Mr. Henryman, Mr. Bass, that are now the three top men in my organization. They all started with me in those early days. So it's kind of been brought along by them. What's your feeling? As far as hotel businesses concerned, of course, we see the motels seemingly springing up all over the place. We know there's more people traveling now, but is the motel a definite threat to your type of business? Or do you feel there's room for both? I think there's room for both because we have changed our method

of construction and the garage facilities that the modern motel has. We've added to our hotels so that we feel that we have everything that the motel has to offer. Plus, a better location has a rule, because we're in the downtown areas. And still, when they motel and the hotels, now in the hotel association, for instance, it's now known as the hotel and motel association, the American hotel association. In other words, they're getting a little closer together. So in other words, we're working together. Do you find, say, with your hotels, I always think of the Davenport Hotel and Spokane, which I guess is a Western hotel. That's right. For a long time, they had certain things they did to create a certain personality like they'd wash the money. That's right. They always had the fire going. This is traditional. The fire went 24 hours a day. Do you have a committee that works on this to set up a certain hotel and how it should be operated, or do you just say to the manager,

here is this plant, give it some personality? We have a concise executive committee now. And that executive committee makes these suggestions to the managers. In fact, the members of that committee are our managers. So they have the facilities there to see to it that all of the managers get the thinking of this executive committee so that it's pretty well spread as far as given the same kind of service and the accommodations for modern. I have one more question for you as this is a Seattle program. And we have seen, unfortunately, certain firms expand and then move out of this area. As far as their headquarters, is there any chance that Western hotels offices may be

moved out of this area? Not as far as I know. I'm very happy to hear you say that. I know. You're in New York. No, I'm in New York. We've been brought up here and we're occupying three floors of an office building right across from the Benjamin Franklin. Plus the top floor of the Olympic. And then we occupy the top floor of the Olympic. Well, you're in Japan. You're in Mexico. It's a pan -mexico, very substantially in Mexico. And also in Japan. We're in Honolulu, also. We already find a hotel called De La Caille. And you're going into New York, but you're about to get out, too, aren't you? We got in New York. And then we got out. But we're still being invented to be in New York again. Well, Mr. Thurston of Western International Hotels, if there's such a trite phrase as success story, I think you exemplified very well. And we're very pleased and proud to have you on Seattle Profile with us. Well, thank you very much. And we're going to be taking a short

recess from Seattle Profile. We hope we'll see you again soon. Good bye. Thank you. This has been Seattle Profile, a visit with Sebert Thurston. Our host was Hogue Sullivan. Seattle Profile is produced with the aid of a financial grant from Pancho and the cooperation of the Seattle Historical Society. Thank you.

Thank you.