McMenamins Anderson School

When a School Doesn't Get Torn Down

The impulse to demolish ageing civic buildings and replace them with mixed-use developments is well-documented across the Pacific Northwest. Bothell's Anderson School took a different route. The 1930s-era school campus at 18607 Bothell Way NE was absorbed into the McMenamins portfolio, a Portland-based hospitality group that has spent decades converting historic structures — old hospitals, decommissioned military bases, Masonic lodges — into hotel and entertainment complexes. What you arrive at in Bothell is less a hotel than a preserved neighbourhood institution with beds, bars, and a soaking pool appended to it. The corridors still feel like corridors. The gymnasium still reads as a gymnasium. That fidelity to the original programme is the operative design decision here, and it shapes everything about the experience.

For readers who benchmark properties against, say, Aman New York in New York City or The Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, Anderson School sits in an entirely different register. Those properties use heritage architecture as a foundation for high-finish interiors. McMenamins tends in the opposite direction: the patina is the point, the institutional bones are retained rather than polished, and murals by a rotating roster of in-house artists cover the walls in a folk-art vernacular that has become a signature of the brand. The result is either charming or chaotic depending on your tolerance for eclecticism, but it is never anonymous.

The Architecture of Adaptive Reuse

Adaptive reuse hospitality has split into two visible camps across the United States. The first refinishes historic shells to contemporary luxury standards , properties like Chicago Athletic Association in Chicago or Raffles Boston in Boston sit here, where the historic structure lends credibility and the interiors deliver comfort levels that compete with new builds. The second camp, where McMenamins operates, treats the original structure as a living document rather than a blank canvas. Exposed brick, original woodwork, and institutional-scale rooms are preserved as found rather than reimagined. The Anderson School fits squarely in the latter category.

The campus layout retains the distributed nature of a working school, which means the various bars, the hotel rooms, and the pool are spread across different buildings and connected by outdoor pathways. This is not the consolidated, seamless flow you find at a resort like Amangiri in Canyon Point or Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur. At Anderson School, you move between spaces the way you'd move between classes. That looseness is either a feature or a friction point, and the brand makes no apologies for it.

The murals deserve specific attention as an architectural element rather than mere decoration. McMenamins has maintained an in-house art programme across its properties for years, and the Anderson School walls carry the cumulative effect of that commitment. Figures, landscapes, and Pacific Northwest imagery are painted directly onto corridor walls and room doors in a style that borrows from WPA-era muralism without pretending to its formality. It gives the property a specificity of place that no amount of locally-sourced furniture or regionally-printed textiles can replicate. For context on what deep investment in sense-of-place looks like at the luxury end of the spectrum, see Blackberry Farm in Walland or SingleThread Farm Inn in Healdsburg , both use landscape and material sourcing rather than muralism, but the underlying ambition is the same: to make the property inseparable from its geography.

Multiple Venues, One Campus

Anderson School complex operates several distinct food and beverage outlets within the same campus footprint. This multi-venue structure is consistent across McMenamins properties and reflects the group's broader strategy: rather than a single all-day dining room, guests circulate between spaces with different characters and programming. A gymnasium-scale bar is not the same experience as a smaller, quieter room, and having both on the same campus gives the property a range that single-venue hotels typically cannot offer.

McMenamins also operates its own brewery across its properties, meaning beer on tap at Anderson School comes from within the company's production network rather than from external regional suppliers. This vertical integration is a brand-level decision with real implications for what's available: the tap list leans toward McMenamins' own labels rather than the broader Pacific Northwest craft beer scene, which is considerable. Guests looking for a curated tour of Washington and Oregon brewing outside the McMenamins catalogue may find the selection narrower than expected, but those travelling specifically for the brand's own products will find consistency.

An outdoor soaking pool operates on the campus grounds. This amenity follows a pattern seen at several McMenamins properties and adds a leisure dimension that most comparably-priced hotels in the Bothell area do not offer. For properties where the hot spring or soaking culture is more deeply embedded in the overall concept, Canyon Ranch Tucson in Tucson represents one end of that spectrum; Anderson School's pool is a direct guest amenity rather than a wellness programme centrepiece.

Bothell as Context

Bothell sits northeast of Seattle, positioned along the Sammamish River corridor in a suburb that has grown considerably as tech-sector employment expanded across the Eastside. The dining and hospitality infrastructure has developed accordingly, though Bothell has not accumulated the density of independent restaurants and bars that characterise Capitol Hill or Fremont within Seattle proper. For visitors using Anderson School as a base for broader regional exploration, our full Bothell restaurants guide maps the surrounding options beyond the McMenamins campus.

The property's address on Bothell Way NE gives it direct access from SR-522 and proximity to the University of Washington Bothell campus, which makes it a functional choice for visitors with business or academic connections to the area. It occupies a different category from destination-driven properties like Amangani in Jackson Hole or Sage Lodge in Pray, where the surrounding landscape is half the reason for the stay. At Anderson School, the campus itself is the destination.

Planning Your Visit

Anderson School books through standard online reservation channels consistent with the McMenamins group's other properties. Room types vary in scale and configuration, reflecting the former school building's original room layouts rather than a uniform hotel template. Guests should expect rooms that differ meaningfully in size and character from one another , part of the appeal of the conversion format is that standardisation was never the goal. The soaking pool and cinema add programming depth that extends the property beyond a simple overnight stay, and the multiple bar venues make the campus worth spending an evening at even for those not staying on-site. For comparison on how other converted historic properties handle the guest experience across the United States, Troutbeck in Amenia and Bowie House in Fort Worth represent the more polished end of the adaptive reuse spectrum.