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Building History

Judge Thomas Burke (1849-1925), a former Seattle Probate Court judge (1876-1880) and a Chief Justice of the last WA Territorial Supreme Court (1888), had been a determined Seattle civic activist, assisting in the organization of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway (SLS&E) and then serving as an agent of the Great Northern Railway.

Burke along with several Seattle associates had investments in at least three development companies--the Wenatchee Improvement Company, Wenatchee Investment Company and the Wenatchee Development Company-- that bought and sold land in Wenatchee, WA, a townsite that they platted and hoped would become a stop along the Great Northern's line approaching Seattle from west of the Cascades. The last development company, the Wenatchee Development Company, helped to convice Hill to use this city as a station location.

To accommodate a railroad depot in town, Burke and his investors realized that a reasonably sized hotel was necessary. They bankrolled the creation of this brick hotel in 1892-1893. The use of brick was important for its fire-resistant qualities, as fires in 1889 had destroyed the cities of Seattle, Ellensburg and Spokane.

This two-story hotel had a brick structure and a wood porch wrapping around its first floor. The Clark Hotel operated between 1893 and 1900, when the publicly-spirited Burke sold it for $1 to the newly formed Chelan County for use as its first courthouse. The former hotel functioned as a courthouse between 1900 and 1924, when a second courthouse was built on land also donated by Burke.

After it was decommissioned as Chelan County's Courthouse #1, a local hotelkeeper, John Doneen, purchased the property for the steep price of $54,000 and refurbished it back into a hotel. This hotel likely fell victim to the Depression.

After 1939, the building functioned as a gas station, heavily remodeled to include Streamline Moderne features. The building is virtually unrecognizable today.

Alteration

The Clark Hotel had its upper stories removed, and remained a brick, one-story structure in 1939. Between 1931 and 2023, Wenatchee experienced about 284 earthquakes, the most major of which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale. It is possible that this masonry structure was weakened by one of these quakes.

PCAD id: 24823