Former Merchant Marine Apartments Change Course -- Wall Street Inn Keeps History In Stock

In apartments where retired merchant marines once rested their sea-worn bones for $30 a month, a bed and breakfast will open tomorrow charging three or four times that for a single night.

The 20-room Wall Street Inn in the former Sailors Union of the Pacific building is a sign of change on two fronts: the decline of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Belltown's growth into a shopping and nightlife hot spot.

Sold last year because the union couldn't afford to keep it, the building is home to one of Belltown's newest trendy spots - the reincarnated El Gaucho restaurant. Soon, a movie theater on the first floor will join the restaurant and inn, helping to attract an upscale crowd that seldom ventured into the neighborhood several years ago.

Wall Street Inn owner Greg Waham said modern furniture will fill the bed and breakfast at First Avenue and Wall Street. But he's leaving a little bit of history in half the rooms - kitchenettes covered in pale green tile that bachelor sailors used.

In the guest common room, Waham said he'll hang a painting of three two-masted schooners sailing through stormy water. His brother found it when they began renovating the place. A yellowed piece of paper glued to the back dedicates the painting from one member of the Sailors Union of the Pacific to another who died in 1962.

John Battles remembers what the building - and the union - used to be.

Battles joined the Sailors Union of the Pacific in 1946, after World War II ended. He sailed with the U.S. Merchant Marine as a deckhand for almost 20 years before becoming a union official. It was steady work for good pay. His friends sent their children through college by making them work on container ships during the summer.

The union bought the three-story Belltown building in the early 1950s and rented extra space to other unions, restaurants and rock concerts over the years. But with the strength of American labor and the U.S. Merchant Marine declining, the union is not as prosperous now.

The union has about one-sixth the number of members it had after World War II, and less than a quarter of them are working on ships, Battles said.

"All of a sudden, we don't have the money to do anything," he said.

Now the union's business agent, Battles said he hears that El Gaucho's cigar lounge has replaced his former office in the Belltown building. Families of four will find weekend rooms where sailors he knew lived off union pension funds until their deaths.

Waham spent about $250,000 replacing the furniture and renovating the sailors' apartments.

Room rates range from $85 to $120 a night. Waham, a former restaurant owner and manager, will live in the building with his wife and three children.

The space has been snapped up quickly. Waham will open 12 of the 20 rooms this weekend. Six of them are already filled, mostly by families from the Eastside who wanted a nearby escape, Waham said.