1895: Before 1910
The first building on the corner was wooden. Martin Paup, an engineer for the Port Blakely Mill Company, built it with a tavern, a general store and a bakery downstairs and rooms above.
Our story
History
The building at 2201 First Avenue and the bars it has housed since 1910.
1910: The Martin Block
In August 1910, engineer George Dietrich drew plans for a three story brick building for Paup, finished by 1911. The upper floors opened as the Hotel Lewiston. On the ground floor, the drawings show a cigar stand and a saloon, the bar first known as the Queen City Tavern.
Seattle had been called the Queen City since at least 1869.
1987: Queen City Grill
Peter Lamb, Robert Eickhof, and Steve and Jennifer Good opened Queen City Grill in the old tavern. It became one of Seattle's most enduring dining rooms. A 1992 Seattle Times review singled out its Dungeness crab cakes and a classic Caesar.
The room passed through several hands after the Grill's long run: a reopening in 2017, Linda Derschang's Queen City from 2018 to 2020, and BOCA, an Argentine steakhouse, from 2021 to 2024.
2025: Queen City
In late October 2025, Jessica Gifford reopened the room as Queen City. She helped open Bathtub Gin & Co. in 2009, is behind Cottontail Club, and first walked into Queen City at nineteen or twenty. Before reopening, she studied the Grill's old menus and memorabilia. A Salvador Dalí photograph from the Grill days hangs by the front window.
The floors above are the Lewiston apartments, run by Plymouth Housing. The crab cakes praised in 1992 are on the menu again.
