Flirting between grit and glamor for over 100 years, Seattle's oldest restaurant remains an important chapter of the city’s past and present.

Years of prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging dominate the Merchant’s Cafe and Saloon’s history. In recent times, it’s had to overcome some of its toughest tests to date. Standing proud in the center of Seattle's historic Pioneer Square, the Merchant’s Cafe has been in operation for 133 years, mirroring the neighborhood it serves while the city has changed around it.

The timber industry and the opportunities it brought are what forged Seattle, with Pioneer Square at the center of this genesis. Before any roads had been built, Skid Road was the only street in town, forged by the erosion of dirt under the weight of the timber being pulled to the saw-mill. Skid Road was soon re-named Mill Street, and is now known as Yesler Way.

Mill Street became the center of a blossoming Seattle, not just geographically but socially and culturally as well. At the time, the city’s population consisted of a small elite of wealthy mill owners and a poorer majority of hardnose laborers. Pioneer Square became a gathering place for wealthy business people looking to expand their fortunes, poor laborers who saw the wild West Coast for financial opportunity, and failed dreamers who had already lost hope. 

This is the scene in which the Merchant’s Saloon opened its doors on Mill Street in 1890. Originally named Gallagher Chambers Company Wines and Liquors, two years later the saloon was sold and renamed the Merchants Exchange Saloon. 

In 1907, the saloon started to take shape under new ownership when it moved into the current building it inhabits today. At the time, the basement and ground floor made up the bar and restaurant, with more illicit activities taking place on the top three floors.

“[The basement and ground floor are] where you would have come in to have a drink or get food,” current bar manager Michael Harris said. “Up here was gambling and gaming, above the restaurant were the two floors of the brothel.”

When walking through the front doors of the Merchant’s Cafe today, cracked white coffered ceiling tiles look down on patrons below while yellow and red stained glass chandeliers illuminate the shadows of the historical room. 

A dark brown stand-up bar, an original fixture from when the Merchants first opened its doors, takes up an entire wall of the room. In one corner, two brown leather couches sit around a wooden cabinet, and a handful of framed photographs and portraits of young women hang on the walls behind them. 

“This would have been a glimpse of what you could find upstairs, or what you could buy upstairs,” Harris explained. “You would go, you would find the portrait you like, and you would tell the bartender which one and he would give you a key to the right room.”

In 1916, the Merchant’s found itself face to face with a new obstacle as a statewide prohibition of liquor passed, four years before the federal law came into place. To show compliance with the new laws, the cafe changed its name yet again to Merchants Cafe Cigars-Soft Drinks. This name change was likely only symbolic in nature: while the ground floor stuck to non-alcoholic refreshments, the windowless basement was far less law-abiding. 

“[Throughout Prohibition], there [was] still an active brothel upstairs,” Harris said. “I know we have an entire level with no windows, so I can't imagine that that wasn't being utilized. I don't think we would still be around if it wasn't.”

Once Prohibition ended, the Cafe changed its name once more to Merchants Cafe Beer & Restaurant. It's not quite clear when the floors above the Cafe became a legitimate hotel, no longer serving as a brothel. Changing owners a handful of times in the later half of the twentieth century, the institution became a historical icon reminding us of our past as Seattle led the way into the future. 

As Seattle became home to some of the largest modern companies in the nation, it turned away from the historically gritty, blue collar identity that built the city. Pioneer Square changed as well, as new high-rises were built and downtown became home to more and more office buildings and apartment high-rises. Yet even with all that change, the neighborhood stayed true to its earliest roots in many ways, remaining a home for those in need of assistance or in need of opportunity. 

“Traditionally, [Pioneer Square is] where low-income housing has been available and it’s where a lot of assisted housing is,” Jerome Haener, tour guide and manager at Beneath the Streets Underground History Tours, said.

The Merchants’ role in the neighborhood hasn't gone unnoticed. 

“The ownership has been very involved in the district,” Alliance for Pioneer Square community development director Chris Woodward said. “Darcy [Hanson, the current owner of the Merchant’s Cafe] is engaged in making sure Pioneer Square is a vibrant and thriving neighborhood.”

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all of Pioneer Square has had to adapt in order to survive. According to Woodward, Pioneer Square lost 25% of its retail businesses during the pandemic. After 130 years of business, the cafe once again had to fight to keep its doors open. 

“We just had to get scrappy, we had to shorten our menu,” Harris, the restaurant’s bar manager, said. “We couldn't continue to buy perishable food with no way to gauge when business would come or not.” 

Returning to its blue collar roots, the Merchants decided to offer 10% off to all construction workers in order to get more people in the doors. They also partnered with historical underground tours of the area, offering discounts to tour-goers. Hanson even found creative revenue streams converting the upstairs floors into Airbnbs available for rent.

Despite the challenges of COVID, all signs point to recovery and management is hopeful for the future. Football season is very important for the historic bar as Seahawks fans pack both the basement and ground floor. 

“Downstairs is an event space,” Harris said. “We are going to start a comedy show there once a week. “We are open for any game day, [any] concert we are going be open downstairs.” 

From brothel to Airbnb, saw-mill workers to Seahawks season ticket holders, bootlegging to discounts for construction workers, the Merchant’s Cafe and Saloon has had to adapt over the years in order to stay open. But at its core, its mission has stayed the same. 

“We want people to feel comfortable and have fun, without the pretentiousness of some of the newer things popping up,” Harris said. “We are just gonna serve you tater tots, and they won't be gourmet fancy tater tots, but we’ll get you drunk.