Club Royale

By far the most elaborately decorated nightclub in the district was the Club Royale, which boasted beautiful stylized murals on either side of a stairwell visible through the window in the door where you are standing. The murals depict a racial mix of stylish men in tuxedos and women in furs, while art deco lettering above the stairs announces the name of the club. More murals graced the walls of the spacious club downstairs, many with an Asian garden and flamingo theme. Hidden for decades, the murals were discovered during a 2018 renovation by Tanya Woo, whose father bought the building in 1963 and opened the Mon Hei Bakery there 10 years later. No one knows who created the paintings, but it may have been a commercial artist related to one of the three Scandinavian businessmen who built the Nelson Tagholm Jensen building back in 1909. Known today as the Louisa Hotel, the building was operated for decades as a single-resident occupancy hotel for Asian cannery workers.

In the summer of 1930, perhaps inspired by the success of Charlie Louie’s Chinese Garden across the street, a crew of gangsters opened a speakeasy downstairs that became colloquially known as the Bucket of Blood, though it was not particularly violent. The place was also known as the Hong Kong Chinese Society, even though the owners were white. Clarinetist Joe Darensbourg (1906-1983), who came to Seattle in 1928 from New Orleans, recalled playing here with Seattle saxophonist Gerald Wells and an unlucky pianist named Anson “Polly” Butler, who was arrested at the club in a 1931 raid.