The Astor Hotel at Commercial and 14th Streets is the tallest building in Astoria, unless you're counting the column at the top of Coxcomb Hill. It's also one of the most striking due to its intriguing Art Deco design. The rear of this building has some outstanding windows that look totally different, and yet blend beautifully with the whole. I'll post them soon. You can read concise history of the building on the web site of Robert D. West, Astoria, Oregon. Scroll down to Number 14, John Jacob Astor Hotel. Briefly, it was built in the aftermath of the 1922 fire that burned 32 city blocks of downtown Astoria. It has an unexpected place in history in that cable TV was invented in this building in 1948 by Ed Parsons, and it became the location of the first cable TV company. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. In the end, Astoria could not support the large number of hotel rooms, and in 1968 it closed for eleven years. It's currently used for low-income housing for the elderly and others who receive Section Eight housing benefits. As it's only one block from the river, it affords a remarkable view.The darker building in the middle is the newly-refurbished Commodore Hotel, seen in this earlier post.
The building in front is the one in this post with the striking Art Deco rounded window at the corner made up of small squares of glass.
