The Panama Hotel in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

's International District

International District, Seattle, Washington

The Chinatown-International District of Seattle, Washington is an ethnic enclave neighborhood and is the center of Seattle's Asian American community. The neighborhood is multiethnic, consisting mainly of people who are of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino ethnicity...

 was built in 1910. The hotel was built by the first Japanese-American architect in Seattle, Sabro Ozasa, and contains the last remaining Japanese bathhouse (sento

Sento

is a type of Japanese communal bath house where customers pay for entrance. Traditionally these bath houses have been quite utilitarian, with one large room separating the sexes by a tall barrier, and on both sides, usually a minimum of lined up faucets and a single large bath for the already...

) in the United States. Since 1985 the Panama Hotel has been owned by Jan Johnson.

It is also known as being the namesake of the novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a historical fiction bestselling novel by Jamie Ford about the love and friendship of a Chinese boy and a Japanese girl during the Japanese internment in World War II.-Plot summary:...

by Jamie Ford.

It was declared a National Historic Landmark

National Historic Landmark

A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...

building in 2006.

Sources

• Alanen, Arnold Robert; Melnick, Robert (2000). Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America, JHU Press, ISBN 0801862647.