The Cloud Room sat atop the 11-story Camlin Hotel in downtown Seattle.

The 1960s menu cover showed an elegant maître d’ offering a tray of food and drink, inside the shape of a cloud.  The interior of the menu also had clouds drawn around the food and drink offerings.

It was an imaginative way to illustrate the 360-degree views that lucky patrons could see of Elliot Bay and the Olympic Mountain range to the West and the neighborhood of Denny Regrade and Mount Baker to the North.

Opened in the 1940s, The Cloud Room replaced a full-floor penthouse suite at the Italianate-designed hotel that had been built in 1926. It had two dining rooms, a piano bar and an outside deck.

Many famous faces - Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt and Elvis Costello, to name a few – performed in the piano room. The Cloud Room was also the setting for some of the scenes in the 1989 romantic comedy drama The Fabulous Baker Boys, starring Michelle Pfeiffer.

The Camlin was sold to TrendWest Resorts which closed The Cloud Room in 2003, turning the space into four penthouse suites. This lovely building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, remains a popular destination for visitors to Seattle. 

Courtesy Private Collection.