The Sanderson Block/ Merchant's Cafe is one of many contributing buildings (ID #90) in the Pioneer Square Skid-Road District. The NPS.gov's
description for this contributing site (pages 147-48) says the following about this building:
Address: 109 Yesler Way
Historic Name: Sanderson Block/ Merchant's Cafe Built: 1890
Plat: Maynards D S Plat/ Block 8/ Lot 8 Parcel: # 5247800550
Style: Commercial/ Richardsonian Romanesque/ Victorian
Architect: W. E. Boone Builder: Unknown
Classification: Historic Contributing Site ID #: 90
109 Yesler Way, known as the "Sanderson Block," in its day, is a three story building with a basement level. The
building's exterior walls are of unreinforced brick masonry. It is rectangular in plan, approximately 29'-6" by 60'.
There is one main street facing elevation facade Yesler Way. On the street level, the building has a recessed glazed
storefront, with, above it, a marquee that runs the length of the building facade. Above the marquee is a glazed
clerestory of multi-colored leaded glass. This glazing boasts an advertisement: "Havana Cigars LOVERA five
cents." Based on photographs from 1929 and 1936, this sign was already part of the building at least by the late
1920s. A photograph from 1911 shows advertisement in the glazing for Olympia Beer.
On the second and third floors, the fa?ade is divided into four bays, further emphasized by engaged brick pilasters
and decorative corbelled brickwork above the windows. The facade is also divided by horizontal bands in cast-stone,
which emphasize the various levels of the building. Between the second and third floors, two decorative cast stone
bands delineate the spandrels, which are decorated by cast- stone rectangles emphasizing the window bays. Above
the third level, an additional horizontal corbelled band marks the transition to another horizontal expanse of wall,
also punctuated by smaller cast-stone rectangles. Based on photographs from the 1930s, a classically inspired caststone
cornice sat above this wall, over which was a decorative brick parapet wall. The original decorative parapet wall has been replaced by concrete wall and much of the original cornice is gone, a casualty of the 1949 earthquake.
This ground floor interior, the Merchant's Cafe, is also noteworthy for its elegantly carved thirty foot "bar," which
includes short columns with Ionic Composite capitals. The "bar" was brought around Cape Horn,(much like the
"bar" on the ground floor restaurant space of the Howard Building), on a schooner in the late 1800s. The room's
metal pressed ceiling is also of note. Its decorative elements include repeated squares, which give the impression of a
caisson ceiling and a wide and striking variety of intricate garland shapes, floral motifs and geometric patterns, in
addition to an ornamental cove ceiling.
There is another inventory datasheet (link below) that also provides a description of this building.