The Sound Hotel Seattle Belltown, Tapestry Collection by Hilton

The Sound Hotel Seattle Belltown announced its grand opening on February 14, 2019, as the first Tapestry Collection by Hilton hotel on the West Coast. It fills the lower floors of Arrivé, a 42-story tower in Belltown that also holds rental apartments, and has 142 rooms. The interiors, by Hirsch Bedner Associates, are built around the neighborhood's music and arts scene.

The place

Belltown is the dense strip of apartments, bars and galleries just north of downtown Seattle. The hotel sits next to the Cinerama, the cinema on 4th Avenue, and a few blocks from the Space Needle, Pike Place Market and the Amazon Spheres.

Sources differ on the exact address of the tower, 2116 or 2120 4th Avenue.

The concept

Arrivé was developed by Lobsang Dargey, who bought the site in 2013 and financed the project partly through EB-5 investor visas. The hotel takes the first ten floors by Hilton's count, eleven according to Seattle Magazine, and The Hotel Group manages it.

Hirsch Bedner Associates worked from the idea that the hotel is a stage. The lobby is meant to evoke an artist's studio, while rooms and bathrooms recall a stage and its backstage dressing rooms. In the rooms, lamps shaped like brass instruments and sound-wave wallpaper carry the theme, and the name nods both to Belltown's musical history and to Puget Sound. Some of the 142 rooms have unobstructed views of the Space Needle and South Lake Union.

Hotel general manager David Watkins commissioned Seattle graffiti artist Jeff Jacobson, known as Weirdo, to paint the brick wall of the Cinerama that eight of the quieter rooms face: a brightly colored guitar among green trees.

Dining & wellness

Currant Bistro, a 36-seat restaurant and bar at street level, serves small plates inspired by Spain, Italy and France. Jon Langley, a chef who became the hotel's food and beverage director, developed the menu. A grab-and-go coffee bar sits next to it.

On the seventh floor, the Lupine Room offers 770 square feet of divisible meeting space for groups of up to 35. Sound Bite Lounge, with a seasonal outdoor sundeck, serves as the gathering spot after meetings, and both rooms look toward the Space Needle.