The time I learned to drive a Ford Model T isn’t something I get to mention very often. Recently, that personal milestone unexpectedly became the perfect introduction to one of Seattle’s most intriguing — and historically significant — hotels: the MarQueen.
It’s been a few years since I took the wheel at the Model T Driving School at the LeMay Collections at Marymount in Spanaway, learning the quirks of the more than 100-year-old automobile that helped transform American transportation. I never imagined that experience would eventually connect me to the Queen Anne hotel.
To my surprise, the MarQueen was built in 1919 as the Seattle Engineering School, where workers employed at the Henry Ford Model T factory, once a mile and a half away, trained and lived. The connection between my own Model T experience and the building’s past was an interesting coincidence…