I saw only today (it had been announced in early February), that the gay bar called R Place will not be able to renew its lease at its 619 East Pine Street location, after 35 years there. Apparently it’s not due to the pandemic. The owner of the Pine Street building had died and the estate did not renew R Place’s lease.
The managers of R Place vowed to find a new location, but the loss of the four floors at the Pine Street location is a very big one for the LGBTQ community.
It feels similar to the loss of the beloved CC Seattle complex’s entertainment venue and bars, at the corner of Madison & 15th Avenue. (This was in Sept. 2010, to make way for the office building called the Bullitt Center).
The building dates back to Capitol Hill’s auto row and is believed to have been a Ford Model T showroom, complete with a car elevator, the remnants of which can still be seen inside the four-story structure. The building must date back to say, 1911, or a little later. At that time, 31 of the city’s 41 car dealers were located on either East Pike Street or Broadway, joined by dozens of businesses catering to an entirely new class of consumers: motorists. [Information from ‘Pike/ Pine Auto Row’ by John Caldbick at https://www.historylink.org/]