PORT ANGELES — A once burned out rooming house, the newly renovated Downtown Hotel today offers 17 neat, simple and elegant rooms, with views of the mountains, Port Angeles Harbor and downtown.

Owners Tony Hoare and his sister, Florence Chamberlain, welcomed visitors Sunday during The Downtown Hotel’s open house. The hotel at 101 1.2 E. Front St. is above The Cornerstone Restaurant and a block south of the Coho Ferry terminal on Railroad Avenue.

“This building has been in the family for over 50 years,” said Hoare, who was happily leading tours of the brightly lit inn, part of a 1914 building. The building is believed to be the first constructed in Port Angeles using concrete, said Hoare.

The hotel, with tan walls and white wood framed doors and windows, will be managed by James White Eagle.

With a welcoming lounge and a room that can used for meetings on the hotel’s first floor, a staircase leads up to a skylight and open hallway with two view suites with kitchenettes and bathrooms. Some of the smaller rooms offer “European-style” shared bathrooms, Hoare said.

“We weren’t operating it before and it became a rooming house,” Hoare said. and redoing it gave us the chance to change it.”

The hotel and restaurant below it were badly damaged in early 2002 when an arson fire left several boarding families homeless.

Today, the hotel is clean and spotless with a completely new interior.

———–

The rest of the story appears in the Monday Peninsula Daily News. Click on SUBSCRIBE, above, to get the rest of the story every day — delivered to your home or office.