Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub (Butterworth Building)

The Butterworth Building was completed October 1, 1903, designed by Seattle architect John Graham, Sr. for funeral director Edgar Ray Butterworth. Butterworth had operated a smaller funeral business since 1889 and commissioned the new building as the city's first purpose-built mortuary — a single structure designed from the ground up to handle embalming, viewing, and administrative functions of a funeral home, rather than a residence or general building adapted for the trade.

The building was notable for several technological firsts. It contained the first elevator on the U.S. West Coast, used specifically to transport bodies between the embalming floor, viewing rooms, and the ground-level chapel. The building also incorporated early refrigeration, internal slumber rooms, and a chapel with theater-style seating. E.R. Butterworth & Sons operated from the building from 1903 until 1923, when the firm relocated to a larger facility on Capitol Hill.

After Butterworth's departure, the building cycled through tenants including offices, a printing operation, and various retail. In 1983, the Mercer family (originating in County Antrim, Northern Ireland) opened Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub in the basement level, which had functioned as the embalming and slumber room floor during the Butterworth era. The pub deliberately preserved much of the period structure, including masonry walls, archways, and what staff identify as the former embalming-room footprint.

The Butterworth Building has a Post Alley entrance at 1916 used by Kells, while the building's primary First Avenue facade carries the 1921 First Avenue address. The building is a contributing structure within the Pike Place Market Historical District and has been featured on television's Ghost Adventures (2010) and multiple regional ghost-themed productions.