Walter A. Shorey was one of the enterprising young men who came to Seattle to get in on its opportunities for growth. He arrived just in time for the opening of a new neighborhood, Fremont, in 1888. Shorey obtained a prime site at the main intersection of North 34th Street & Fremont Avenue, to build a large hotel/boarding house. Fremont’s founders had planned ahead to establish resources for the community, so they had already set up a lumber mill which provided jobs and materials to build houses. A boarding house was needed for temporary residents or single men like the sawmill workers.
After about ten years Walter Shorey sold the hotel to Samuel Dixon, another early Fremont businessman. Shorey continued to live in the area and listed himself as a real estate agent. Perhaps Shorey sold the boarding house business because he’d had to slow down due to poor health, as he died in 1903.
In the 1901 photo shown here, people on the veranda of Hotel Dixon are standing with their bicycles. The reason for this might be because hotel proprietor Samuel Dixon also owned a bicycle shop, right across the street. During his years as a businessman in Fremont, Dixon juggled several enterprises, including insurance, banking and real estate developments.
Hotel Dixon stood on this site, northeast corner of 34th & Fremont Avenue North, until 1927 when it was replaced by the McKenzie Building.