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Westin Seattle

twin-tower highrise hotel in Seattle, Washington

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ7988924
Source-derived summary

The Westin Seattle is an upscale highrise twin-tower hotel in downtown Seattle, Washington. Opened in 1969, it is the flagship property of the Westin Hotels & Resorts brand, owned by Marriott International.

History

On December 28, 1966, Western International Hotels and Alcoa jointly announced the development of the $18 million Washington Plaza Hotel, to be built on the site of the historic Orpheum Theatre. It would be the first new large-scale hotel constructed in Seattle since the adjacent Benjamin Franklin Hotel was built in 1929. Western International President Edward E. Carlson selected the local architecture firm of John Graham & Associates to design the hotel, and the local Howard S. Wright Construction Company to build it. The two firms had also designed and constructed the Space Needle six years earlier, whose construction was first proposed by Carlson and whose restaurant was operated by Western International from 1962–1982.

The Orpheum Theatre was demolished beginning in August 1967. The hotel originally consisted of a single 40 story tower, today's south tower, reaching a height of 121 m (397 ft). The tower was topped out in January 1969 and the hotel opened on June 29, 1969. Western International Hotels operated the Washington Plaza as one property with the now-connected Benjamin Franklin Hotel.

Editorial summary

“Westin Seattle” enters the record as twin-tower highrise hotel in Seattle, Washington. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Westin, Seattle and twin-tower can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1969, 1966, 1929, 1962—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Westin, Seattle and twin-tower.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Westin Seattle” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Westin, Seattle and twin-tower provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7988924. Authority coordinates are 47.614, -122.338. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1966, 1929 and 1962.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Westin Seattle”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Westin Seattle primary sources, Westin Seattle archive and Westin research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Westin Seattle”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Westin Seattle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.