For more than twenty years, you had to be a member to get through the door. The Ruins was a private supper club in an old Lower Queen Anne warehouse, known for secret dinners, painted walls and a very large elephant. This is how it started, and how it nearly came down.
Joe McDonald and Virginia Wyman ran Market Place Caterers, and they had long wanted a dinner club of their own. They took an 11,000-square-foot warehouse in Lower Queen Anne, two blocks from Seattle Center, and built one from scratch.
They nearly called it The Palace. Wyman worried guests would expect too much. Call it The Ruins, she reasoned, and people would be happy with whatever they found inside.
To find their first members, the founders threw a party for past catering clients and pitched the idea. Almost everyone said yes. Joining cost about $500, plus $120 a year, and by 1996 the club had nearly 800 members.
“I believe in parties, and I believe in hospitality”
Virginia Wyman, co-founder
Wyman furnished the club with pieces from her late mother's collection, faded Oriental carpets and towers of books. A gilded horse covered in paper blossoms, rescued from a department store window display, took its place in the entry hall.
The Library grew to more than 4,000 books under a stained glass dome, and the Ballroom was covered in hand-painted murals, right up to a ceiling painted as a night sky.
Joe bought Ruby from a Frederick & Nelson display. She is a life-size animatronic elephant built for the 1931 Paris exhibition, and she has lived at The Ruins since the early days.
Nearly a hundred years old, she still moves. Ask nicely and the staff will start her gears and set her trunk swinging.
After more than two decades as a private club, the building was slated to be torn down. Landmark Event Co. saved it, kept the murals, the books and Ruby, and opened The Ruins to weddings, galas and parties, with Herban Feast in the kitchen.
The murals, the books and Ruby are all still here. Weddings, galas and private parties now fill the house the members once kept to themselves.
The club made headlines when it opened, and again when it was nearly lost.
Book a private tour with McKayla and walk every space at The Ruins.
