1890 Oakland Block Building, Bellingham's Mobile Restaurant Heritage
316 W Holly St, Bellingham, WA 98225
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Breakfast and brunch pricing.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Restaurant on the ground floor of a historic 1890 brick and Chuckanut sandstone building
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1890 · Oakland Block · New Whatcom City Hall (briefly) · 1904 Mobile Restaurant (African-American-owned heritage) · Bellingham Old Town Historic District
The Old Town Cafe occupies the ground floor of the Oakland Block, an 1890 brick and Chuckanut sandstone building forming a triangular wedge between Holly, Prospect, and Champion Streets in downtown Bellingham, Washington. The block was built by Dr. Ambrose Cornwall and named after his California hometown.
In the years after the founding of New Whatcom, the Oakland Block briefly housed the city's City Hall alongside a clothing store, sheet-music store, and hotel; in 1892 the city council moved out to the new Whatcom City Hall, now the Whatcom Museum. The cafe heritage in this space traces to 1904, when it opened as the Mobile Restaurant — one of Whatcom County's only African-American-owned businesses at the time. The space has continuously served as a restaurant for more than a century.
The Oakland Block has historically been the tallest building in old Bellingham (then New Whatcom) and is recorded as a contributing structure in the local downtown historic landscape. Local tradition retold by Bellingham history-walking resources also notes a mortuary phase among the building's earlier uses.
Sources
Regional Bellingham ghost-tour writing on the Old Town Cafe describes several recurring details: clean dishes that appeared to levitate for about fifteen minutes after closing, phantom piano music heard with no piano present in the building, and sightings of a female figure looking down from a second-floor window of the building before disappearing.
Local tradition holds that earlier uses of the building — which include the brief 1890s City Hall period, the 1904 Mobile Restaurant, and references in Bellingham walking-tour material to a mortuary phase — provide context for the figure in the upstairs window. These accounts circulate in regional Pacific Northwest ghost-tourism coverage rather than in named-investigator publications.
The Old Town Cafe operates as a popular breakfast and brunch spot, and the haunted reputation is part of Bellingham's local color rather than the cafe's primary identity.
Media Appearances
Eat breakfast or brunch at the Old Town Cafe at 316 W Holly Street. The cafe traces its heritage to 1904, when the same space hosted the Mobile Restaurant, one of Whatcom County's only African-American-owned businesses. The cafe building, the Oakland Block, dates to 1890.
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