URBAN SPELUNKING

Clockwise from upper left: (1) across the street from the Broadway entrance to Hotel Murano (47°15.039 N, 122° 26.366 W); (2) the exterior of the upper floors; (3) west stairway; and (4) east stairway at floor 10.


The view from Altezzo Ristorante on floor 26.

"The time to physically wander, to let our minds wander, to daydream, has become much undervalued. Our minds often do their best thinking without our conscious interference."
—glass artist Toots Zynsky, quote from her installation, floor 17, Hotel Murano

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True, urban spelunking is a term usually used by those who explore utility tunnels and other "liminal zones" of college campuses and cities. But, I think it is an appropriate phrase for what the child and I did on Friday. Plain and simple, spelunking is the exploration of caves. What we did was explore the "caves" and "tunnels" of a particular Tacoma hotel—the former Tacoma Sheraton, now Hotel Murano. So, I think it is a valid appropriation of the term.

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I initially heard from the uncle that the Tacoma Sheraton was under new ownership and being renovated. He told me that they were acquiring contemporary glass art from renown glass artists. I tucked it away in my brain, and told myself to look into it later. I tucked it away too well, because I forgot about it.

Last week, I was perusing the March/April 2008 issue of City Arts magazine, and one of the feature articles was on Hotel Murano's collection of glass art. My memory was triggered, and soon we were exploring the hotel and viewing glass art installations.

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Hotel Murano is in the final phase of renovation. It is placing the finishing touches on areas of the lobby and some of the common areas, such as meeting rooms. The child and I bypassed the lobby art and took the elevator straight to the top. The Altezzo Ristorante has a moderate lunch crowd, and there was no host person at their front desk so we wandered into the unoccupied half of the restaurant and enjoyed some great views of downtown Tacoma.

We hopped back onto the elevator. Our plan was to drop down one floor and look at its art, and then repeat this until we arrived in the lobby. Other people were trying to get to their room on floor twenty-four, and it appeared that you need a room key in order for the elevator to allow you onto the upper floors. Those people didn't get their key card swiped in time and we found ourselves on floor four. That is the first floor of rooms, so we exited the elevator.

Each floor is dedicated to the work of a particular glass artist. The space immediately in front of the elevators in the hallway has a piece of installed glass art and information about the artist who created it. To either side of the installation, throughout the hallway, are pictures of that particular artist at work on that particular piece, in addition to other pieces of his or her work. We decided that we would look at the work and pictures on a particular floor and then proceed via the stairways to the floor above to repeat the entire process. We visited floors four through seventeen (minus the nonexistent thirteenth floor). We are saving floors eighteen through twenty-five for another day.

We took the elevator down to the lobby, since you can access the elevator from the floor you are on, even though the reverse in not necessarily true. We spent another half hour looking at the lobby art and trying out the various designer couches and chairs, before wandering back outside onto Broadway to take the Tacoma Link back to the Dome District.