Jan Johnson was an unlikely steward for the Panama Hotel. Back in 1985, the building’s longtime owner, Takashi Hori, handed the deed and his hefty ring of keys over to the young artist who’d taken a shine to the neighborhood. Johnson had zero Japanese heritage—and zero experience maintaining a creaky single-occupancy hotel built in 1910. But for several decades, she’s managed to protect a powerful symbol of a neighborhood whose history looms large, even if its boundaries don’t.
This year, Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board conferred official city landmark status on the Panama Hotel. The distinction includes Hashidate Yu, the communal bathhouse, or sento, frozen in time in
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