Let’s remember when Oliver’s bar in the Mayflower Hotel became Washington’s first “daylight bar,” on this day in 1976 (June 26)
I walk past Oliver’s, the bar in the Mayflower Park Hotel at the corner of 4th and Olive at least once or twice a week, and I had no idea it had any notable history. I was unaware and wrong. I did not know bars having windows was noteworthy.
On June 26, 1976, Oliver’s Lounge opens in the Mayflower Park Hotel in downtown Seattle. Taking advantage of a change in regulations, Oliver’s is the city’s first “daylight bar,” meaning passersby can look in from the street and see bartenders mixing and serving cocktails. A Seattle Weekly article written later that summer identifies Oliver’s the first daylight bar anywhere in the state.
And…
The revolutionary development of a daylight bar in Seattle was the result of an extensive renovation of the Mayflower Park’s cocktail lounge coinciding with a change in state liquor regulations. Previously it was illegal for hard liquor to be served in view of the street. In practical terms, that meant bars could not have windows. The lounge space that would become Oliver’s was in the process of being redesigned when the law changed, allowing for the removal of the exterior wood that covered what had been grand windows in the original 1927 design. Floor-to-ceiling windows were installed, and light from 4th Avenue and Olive Way came pouring in.
As the Seattle Weekly put it a few months after Oliver’s opened, “the unexpected sight of watching a bartender, from the street, wipe a glass and measure a shot of Jim Beam is both startling and pleasurable.”
For more reading:
