The Martin Block: a short history of 2201 First Avenue
A wooden tavern, a 1910 brick building, the Queen City Tavern, Queen City Grill and the room as it is today. The story of our corner, told with sources.
Walk north on First Avenue from Pike Place Market and, a few blocks in, you reach a three story brick building on the corner. The sign out front says Queen City. The name is older than the building.
Before the brick
The first building on this corner was wood. According to the City of Seattle's historical sites inventory, Martin Paup, an engineer for the Port Blakely Mill Company, built it with a tavern, a general store and a bakery on the ground floor and rooms upstairs.
First Avenue changed around it. The Denny Regrade, beginning in 1898, lowered the street and opened this part of town to new hotels and shops.
The Martin Block
In August 1910, engineer George Dietrich drew plans for a brick building for Paup. The city lists it as the Martin Block, completed in 1911. The upper floors opened as the Hotel Lewiston. The ground floor plans show a cigar stand and a saloon, a bar first known as the Queen City Tavern.
By then the name had history of its own. HistoryLink traces Seattle's nickname, the Queen City, to an 1869 pamphlet. The tavern borrowed a name the whole city already answered to.
Queen City Grill
In 1987, Peter Lamb, Robert Eickhof, and Steve and Jennifer Good turned the old tavern into Queen City Grill. A 1992 Seattle Times review praised its Dungeness crab cakes and a classic Caesar salad. For many Seattle diners, the Grill was the room: booths, a long bar and a menu that did not chase trends.
After the Grill's long run, the space changed hands several times, including a reopening in 2017, Linda Derschang's Queen City from 2018 to 2020, and BOCA, an Argentine steakhouse, from 2021 to 2024.
The floors above
The hotel upstairs never stopped being home to someone. Plymouth Housing now runs the upper floors as the Lewiston apartments, affordable studios that share management with the neighboring Scargo.
Queen City today
In late October 2025, Jessica Gifford reopened the ground floor as Queen City. Seattle Magazine reported that she studied old menus and memorabilia from the Grill before opening, and that a Salvador Dalí photograph from those years hangs by the front window.
The crab cakes are on the menu again. So is a martini list, and a house cocktail called the Flatliner.
If you know more about this corner, from any era, we would like to hear it. Write to us at info@queencitybelltown.com.
Queen City is at 2201 First Avenue in Belltown.
