Monte Cristo Hotel: Everett's Community-Funded Grand Dame
Near Woodinville, Washington
The Monte Cristo Hotel in Everett was built the way a small city builds a cathedral, by pooling everyone's money. When the old hotel on this site closed in nineteen twenty-four, more than three hundred local investors bought preferred stock to finance a replacement. The six-story brick Renaissance Revival building, designed by Seattle architect Henry Bittman, opened on May twenty-ninth, nineteen twenty-five, with a live radio broadcast from Seattle station KFOA that was billed as the Northwest's first long-distance remote broadcast.
The total cost came to five hundred thirty-five thousand dollars. For nearly fifty years the Monte Cristo was Everett's social center, the place for banquets, dances, and visiting dignitaries. It stopped operating as a hotel in nineteen seventy-two, sat empty, and was restored in nineteen ninety-four as affordable housing.
It remains on the National Register of Historic Places.
