Merchant Hotel (Portland, Oregon)

The Merchant Hotel, also known as the Merchants' Hotel, is a historic former hotel building in Portland, Oregon, United States. It is located at 121 N.W. Second Avenue in Old Town Chinatown. It is a contributing property in the Portland Skidmore/Old Town Historic District, which was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1977. It is one of the few remaining examples of Victorian Italianate, cast iron architecture on the West Coast. It occupies half of a city block, specifically along the south side of N.W. Davis Street from Second to Third Avenues.HistoryBrothers Louis, Adolph, and Theodore Nicolai were original owners of the hotel. It took four years to build, and the Second Avenue section was completed in 1880. The Third Avenue section opened in 1884. A luxury hotel, it boasted one of the first hydraulic elevators in the city and by 1889 had grown to take up half of the city block. The hotel was purchased by musician Eugene Stebinger in the 1890s.In addition to its use as a hotel, the building "has also housed a bar, brothel, billiards hall, and most notoriously, a cracker factory", wrote author Bart King in 2007.