An Interesting Place: The Panama Hotel

Jan Johnson stands in the stairway leading to the Panama Hotel she's revived and remade into an elegant gathering place for an eclectic clientele. Before becoming the caretaker of the basement's Nisei historical trove, Johnson lived in Italy and designed fine knitwear for haute couture houses. TEA &TREASURES A hotel gets hip, from the basement up THE MOMENT you step through the vintage glass doors and into the café, there's a certain feeling lingering in the air, the spirit of this place. If you know nothing about what's in the basement — or the Lamborghini-driving fashion designer who brought it all back to life — you may think the ambiance comes from the aroma of toasted green tea and Italian espresso. Or the plank floors restored to violin glow. Or the historic black-and-white photographs on the brick walls. Or, perhaps, it's the extraordinary light that flows uphill from Elliott Bay, ricochets off a dreary slab building across the street, strikes the gilt letters on the café window and casts a perfect shadow on the wall: PANAMA HOTEL. The Panama Hotel and Tea House, at 605 1/2 S. Main St., anchors what was once the heart of Seattle's Nihonmachi, Japantown, one of the most thriving communities of its kind in the country. It was built in 1910 by the city's first Japanese architect, and for the next three decades, the lower floors of the five-story workingman's hotel were home to a laundry, dentist, tailor, pool hall, book store, florist, sushi shop and sento, a Japanese-style public bathhouse. Of hundreds of such communal bathhouses in Japantowns across the country, this is the only one preserved intact, in place. more here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2002/1103/cover.html I haven't been to the Panama Hotel or its Tea Room yet but  it sounds fascinating from this article.  This is a place my  character will have to visit often.