Cast in 1912. A hotel since 2016.
Pacific Iron Works poured ship hardware on this floor for seventy-five years. Then the building sat. Then we put beds in it.
What Cinder is
An independent, twenty-eight room hotel in a converted iron foundry on Portland’s Central Eastside. No flag, no loyalty program, and a kitchen that cooks five nights a week.
How it runs
A person at the desk every hour of the year. Rates on our own engine with tax shown before you pay. Rooms described honestly, down to which one hears the freight elevator.
Empty is also a date
The foundry went up in 1912 for Pacific Iron Works, which made cleats, hawsepipes, and the unglamorous hardware that kept Columbia River hulls together. The last heat was 1987. For the next twenty-six years the building was vacant: pigeons, a leaking monitor roof, and a historic overlay that made demolition more expensive than patience.
Conversion started in 2014. The hotel opened in 2016 with twenty-eight rooms and no kitchen. Dana Peck took over as general manager in 2019, and Marisol Vega lit the charging ovens as The Charge in 2020.
From the first pour to the first guest
- 1912
Pacific Iron Works starts pouring ship hardware on SE 3rd.
- 1987
The last heat. The building sits empty until 2014.
- 2014
Conversion begins, and so do the historic commission meetings.
- 2016
Cinder opens: twenty-eight rooms, a desk, no kitchen.
- 2019
Dana Peck becomes general manager.
- 2020
The Charge opens in the old ovens under Marisol Vega.
Dana Peck
Eight years on Portland night desks before this one. Took Cinder in 2019 because the foundry had the bones and needed someone who had worked a 3 a.m. desk. If you call after midnight, there is a fair chance it is Dana, or someone Dana trained not to hide behind a night bell.
Marisol Vega
Opened the kitchen in 2020. Wood-fired Pacific Northwest, a short card, closed Monday and Tuesday on purpose. She will tell you when the morels are gone, and she will not invent a farm name to fill the silence.
Brick, timber, and a loud elevator
The historic commission won more arguments than we did, which is why the iron window frames are still iron and the pour-floor brick is still brick. The freight elevator is original. It is loud after 10, and we say so on the Rooms page.
We did not keep the asbestos, the pigeons, or the idea that a foundry should become a food hall.
Twenty-eight rooms. A kitchen five nights. A lot on SE 3rd for $18. A desk that answers. That is the whole inventory, and we would rather do those well than add a rooftop.
Brick, steel, and the tools they used
Tap a photo to enlarge it.
The brick is still here. So is the desk.
If you want the long version of the conversion, Dana will talk about permits until you change the subject. If you want a room, the engine is faster.